Keep your head down

Keep Your Head Down $2.00

WALTER BERNSTEIN

is a sergeant in the United States Army.
He was graduated from Dartmouth in
1940 and entered the Army in February
1941. He is on the staff of Yank, and as
their correspondent he covered Iran, Pal-
estine, Egypt, North Africa, the Sicily
campaign, the Italian campaign, and Yugo-
slavia.

In addition to The New Yorker, his ar-
ticles and fiction have appeared in Theatre
Arts, the Yale Review, the Virginia Quar-
terly, and Harper's Bazaar.

He is married to Marva Spelman, the
dancer. They have a daughter who was
born when he was at the front in Sicily
and whom he didn't see until she was
eleven months old.

BOOK FIND CLUB

480 Lexington Ave., New York 17, N. Y.

From the collection of the

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San Francisco, California
2006

Keep Vour Mead frown

Keep your Mead Down

B Y W A L T E R BERNSTEIN

BOOK FIND CLUB, NEW YORK

George Braziller Director

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE VIKING PRESS

This Edition Is Produced in Full Compliance with All
War Production Board Conservation Orders

COPYRIGHT 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 BY WALTER BERNSTEIN
PUBLISHED BY THE VIKING PRESS IN MAY 1945

Published on the Same Day in the Dominion of Canada
by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited

All the chapters in this book originally appeared in The New Yorker,

except "Night Watch," which was published in The Yale Review, and

"Juke Joint" and "I Love Mountain Warfare," which have not been

published heretofore.

Printed in U. S. A. by Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., Scranton, Pa.
Designed by Stefan Salter

TO THE MEN
WHO REPORTED TO DRAFT BOARD 179,

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK,

ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 24,
WHEREVER THEY ARE

CONTENTS

Prologue I

I. Action in Georgia 5

II. A Roller Coaster Is Worse 19

III. Juke Joint 32

IV. A Night in the Guardhouse 44
V. Inhale! Outhale! 56

VI. Night Watch 67

VII. The Taking of Ficarra 81

VIII. Busy Morning 100

IX. I Love Mountain Warfare 120

X. Search for a Battle 138

XI. Walk Through Yugoslavia

1. Road Crossing 157

2. March 175

3. Tito's Headquarters 192
Epilogue 21 o

PROLOGUE

T WAS still dark when he got to the draft board. Three
other inductees were already there, standing self-consciously
against the wall. He stood by a radiator until he got warm,
then sat on the edge of a desk, across from a poster showing
a group of laughing air cadets. He wished he had taken
time for breakfast.

The room gradually filled up. He didn't know any of the
men, although some of them knew others. Finally one of
the members of the draft board arrived : a small, round, bald-
headed man, who came in smiling and rubbing his hands,
and immediately knocked on a table for silence. The room
quieted and the little man took out a piece of paper and
began reading names. The men answered promptly; one of
the names was not there and there was a pause as everyone
looked around for the man, wondering who he was, what
he had done, what had happened to him.

After the names were called, the board member said, "Let's
go, men," and led the way outside. They walked down the
dark street toward the subway. The street lamps shone
yellowly on the sad, dirty remains of the last snowfall. "I
should have brought my rubbers," someone said. At the
subway the baldheaded man stopped and took a pack of

PROLOGUE

government transit tickets from his pocket. He gave these
to the lead man, together with a printed list of instructions
as to where he should go. Then he beamed at all the men
and said in a loud voice, "Good luck, fellows." He waved
cheerily as the men trooped down the subway stairs. "You
little baldheaded son of a bitch," one of the men said, but
the little man did not seem to hear.

The subway was packed with commuters, who looked
curiously at the group of men. He stood near a young girl
who was reading Marius the Epicurean. He felt a desperate
need to talk to someone and asked the girl suddenly what
school she went to. The girl did not answer and he felt him-
self turning red. He wishe4 he had bought a newspaper.

The ride took a half-hour, and the armory was right in
front of the station. They went inside and were directed into
a huge, cavernous drill room and placed at the end of a line
of other inductees. When his turn came, he gave his name
and essential statistics to a bored sergeant at a desk, was
given a tag to place around his neck, and directed upstairs.

He remembered little about the physical examination. He
was just part of a long assembly line that wound in and out
of little cubicles. He remembered being told to sit down,
stand up, bend over, cough; but he could not remember a
single face. The only place he stopped was at the psychiatrist,
who held him five minutes longer because he bit his nails.
Then he was back in the drill room, standing with a group
of other men, his right hand raised, repeating words after a
bored officer. Their voices echoed hollowly in the dank room.

2

PROLOGUE

Afterwards he followed the others to the telephone booths
in the corner and waited on line to make a call. He heard
the phone ringing at the other end and then her voice, still
heavy with sleep : "Hello."

He said, "It's me. I'm in the Army."

"Oh."

There was silence while he tried to think of something
to say.

"I'll call you when I get to camp," he said.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"All right," he said.

He hung up and went back to wait with the others along
the side of the room. At the other end, the line of new in-
ductees was still as long as when he had come. There was a
running track on a balcony around the top of the drill field
and a middle-aged man was running around and around.
The man was in shorts and sweat shirt, and he could hear
him breathing heavily as the man passed over his head. A
sergeant walked down the line, asking in a loud voice if
anyone there could work a typewriter. He was going to
volunteer, but two others beat him to it.

"Those guys are all set," somebody said, but later he saw
them sweeping up the room, with the sergeant giving them
orders. He made a note to be careful about volunteering in
the future.

At last the inductees were all there. A sergeant lined them
up and marched them out of the armory to a waiting railroad
train. Army men stood by while they piled in. He found

3

P R O L O G U

a seat next to a window. A crap game had started in the seat
ahead o£ him, and a bottle was already being passed around.
He took a drink and passed it on; it was raw and hot and
he could feel it down to his toes. He looked out of the
window as the train started, looking back as long as he could
at the spot where they had boarded the train, trying to fix
the neat, civilian scene in his mind so that he would never
forget it, no matter where he went.

I. ACTION IN GEORGIA

A

bleak day in the Jamaica armory and a three-day
stop-over at Camp Upton, I became a member of the Eighth
Infantry Regiment. From Upton I was shipped, along with
several hundred other selectees, to Fort Benning, Georgia,
where the Eighth was stationed in the bosom of the Fourth
Division Motorized, the Army's one fully mechanized
division. The Eighth Infantry is one of the oldest and most
honored regiments in the United States Army. Founded
in 1838 at West Troy, New York, it has since served all over
the world, participating in the Indian, Mexican, Civil,
Spanish-American, and Philippine Wars. It is a matter of
some regret to the older enlisted men that the Eighth did not
see action in the last world war; two days after the regiment
arrived in France, the armistice was hastily signed. The
Eighth did, however, become part of the American Army
of Occupation, remaining in Germany until 1923. For the
past half-century, its personnel has come mainly from the
South, but in the last three months the regiment has been
brought to wartime strength — about two thousand men — by
an influx of Northern selectees, so today Southerners are
outnumbered by Northerners two to one. Almost all the
selectees in the Eighth are from New York City or its en-

5

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

virons, while most of the officers and Regular Army men
are Southerners. Though this has resulted in a good deal of
sectional chauvinism, actual conflict between the North and
the South has been negligible. Each side, nevertheless, is
continually amazed at the other's inability to speak English.
Once at his permanent station, a selectee goes through a
period of recruit drill before he is given regular company
duty. In the infantry this is an eight-week stretch. The first
three weeks or so of this are spent on close-order drill and
lectures. Close-order drill is formation work done at atten-
tion, such as the Manual of Arms or marching in a parade.
It is not until about the fourth week that extended-order
drill, or actual battle formation, is practiced. Until that fourth
week the selectees in my company were taught how to march
in step, how to carry and clean a rifle, how to salute an officer,
and other .military necessities. We were also lectured on
hygiene, first aid, sex, and the iniquities of the neighboring
cities. The days were completely routined. Our company was
awakened at five-thirty, marched to the drill field at seven,
drilled and lectured until twelve, marched back again, and
lunched. At ten minutes to one we were again lined up,
and the morning program was repeated until five, when we
were dined. After that we were technically free until the
next morning, although beds had to be made, rifles cleaned,
shoes and faces shined, and other minor tasks accomplished.
By ten, when lights went out, most of the men were already
asleep.

6

ACTION IN GEORGIA

The drill field was hot and dusty, and it was therefore
with much relief that we learned one afternoon in our fourth
week that we were to march a mile into the woods and have
our afternoon there instead of on the field. The word went
around as we lined up at ten to one in front of the barracks,
and our lieutenant confirmed it. He was a blond young man
of twenty-five who had been called up from the Reserves.
He was strict, but the regulars assured us that we would
later thank him for it. When we were all lined up, he told
us that we were going into the woods for extended-order
drill and should pay close attention to what happened, as
this would approximate actual battle conditions. Then we
put on our packs, slung our rifles over our shoulders, and
marched off.

We marched in three platoons, about sixty men to a
platoon. The Fourth Division Motorized is not only motor-
ized but also streamlined. This means that it has fewer men
and that its component units form in threes instead of fours:
three platoons to a company, three companies to a battalion,
three battalions to a regiment, and three regiments to a divi-
sion. In a so-called heavy division, which contains heavier
artillery, the distribution is by fours. I was in the first
platoon, between a twenty-five-year-old Brooklyn clothing
salesman named Stein and a twenty-three-year-old Italian boy
named La Gattuta, who came from Corona and had been a
stock clerk at Macy's. The other men in the group usually
referred to La Gattuta with obscenity, if affection, because he

7

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

had volunteered. He had fought in the Golden Gloves one
year but had been disqualified because of a heart murmur
after he had won several bouts. He was delighted with our
excursion to the country. "This looks just like Corona," he
said as we left the camp area and headed into the woods.

Inside the woods it was cool and pleasantly damp. The
trees were all Georgia pine and grew straight and tall; you
could see the sky only in patches. The ground was covered
with pine needles. We marched quietly, since conversation
in ranks was strictly prohibited, but you could tell that the
men were excited when they counted cadence. During a
march an officer will call out "Cadence count!" to see if his
men are in step. As the men step off on their right foot, they
shout "Step!" and then "One, two, three, four" to each suc-
cessive step. This is repeated twice. If the men have been in
the Army for more than a week, they shout the Army
equivalent of "one, two, three, four," which is "hut, tup,
thrup, frup," but during the first couple of months this
always makes them feel a little foolish. Usually you can de-
termine the level of men's spirits by the way they count
cadence. This afternoon they were counting with vim if
not abandon.

After twenty minutes of marching, we came to a small
glade and the lieutenant called a halt. We were told to take
off our packs and prepare for the afternoon's work. The lieu-
tenant spoke to us briefly about what we were to do, using
the word "terrain" often and repeating that this was practice
in actual warfare Then the company was divided into fifteen-

8

ACTION IN GEORGIA

man squads, each squad assigned to a specific sector of an
assumed battle front and put under a corporal or sergeant,
and marched off into the woods. My squad was led by one of
the regular sergeants, a tall, red-headed boy from South
Carolina. He was perhaps the best liked of the non-com-
missioned officers, because he did not work the men too hard.
He led the squad at an easy pace for about two hundred
yards, stopping every so often to see that no one was lost.
We walked single file. I was still between Stein and La
Gattuta, "In Prospect Park—-" Stein said as he tripped over
a branch.
"Cut out the god-damn talkin' in ranks," the sergeant said.

When we had gone far enough, the sergeant held up his
hand and everyone stopped. "Gather round," he said. He
knelt, and we all knelt around him. He pointed to a small,
wooded hill about three hundred yards ahead. "We're goin'
to attack that there hill, and there's a machine-gun nest on
top of it," he said. No one said anything, but a few men
stared at the hill with interest. The sergeant looked at us and
then at the hill and then at us again. "You all got that?" he
asked. We nodded. "O.K.," he said. "Line up in column."
We took our places. "When we scatter, even numbers will
go to the right, odd to the left," he said. "Count— Hawl"
We counted off after one false start. I was No. 9. "O.K.," the
sergeant said. He waved his hand forward and we started
off, walking slowly in single file toward the hill.

After about fifty yards the sergeant held up his hand as

9

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

a signal to stop. He turned to face us and held both arms
out horizontally, waving his hands up and down. That was
the signal for us to form two skirmish lines, right and left.
In a skirmish line men are staggered in two rows, one five
yards ahead of the other. I unslung my rifle, hitting myself
in the head, and ran to my left. When I was five yards past
No. 7, I stopped and looked up and down my line. It was
practically a semicircle, but the sergeant, by means of signals,
adjusted the men until the line was straight and facing the
hill. Then he lowered his hand, palm down — the signal for
us to drop. There is a correct way to do this in the Army:
you hit the ground first with your knees, then with the butt
of the rifle, to break your fall. First, though, you are sup-
posed to take cover. I headed for a tree a yard or so to my left
and took about ten seconds getting down. Once comfortable,
I fitted the rifle to my shoulder, as we had been taught to do,
and pointed it toward the hill. The top of the hill was bare
and innocent in the sun. I lay with my body at a forty-five-
degree angle to the target, legs apart, and looked for the spot
on the hill where the imaginary enemy's machine-gun nest
might be located.

In front the sergeant was talking to Nos. i and 2, who were
looking important. He pointed to the hill and they nodded.
Then they started to walk slowly toward it, No. i several
steps ahead of No. 2. They moved on tiptoe, up the hill,
dodging from one tree to another, and I wondered what the
hell they were doing. Then I remembered: they were the
scouts who would go ahead and warn us when they saw the

10

ACTION IN GEORGIA

enemy. I was watching them, expecting at any moment to
hear a shot ring out and see one of them tumble expertly to
the bottom of the hill, when the sergeant came down the
line to inspect our positions. "That tree ain't no good to hide
behind," he said to me. It was a good two feet across and
looked solid enough for anything, but the sergeant shook his
head. "Machine gun'll cut right through it," he said. "Cut
your god-damn head right ofT." He moved on down the line
and I looked uneasily for another tree.

There was a clump of them to my right and I crawled
toward it, conscious of all my exposed parts. When I got
there I found Stein sitting against the trunk of one of the
trees. "This is strictly a dog's life," he said sadly. "Give me
suits to sell."

I pointed out that he was No. 8 and belonged to the right
side of the line.

"Eight-shmate," he said. "You got a cigarette?"

I shook my head and he crawled over to No. 7 to borrow
one.

The scouts were evidently within range of the enemy, be-
cause they were crawling now, but they hadn't yet reached
the top. I made a mental note never to volunteer for any
scouting and looked around to see what else was going on.
Up and down the line men were flat behind trees or stumps or
bushes. Even at such short distance it was hard to pick them
out because of the blending of the uniforms with the ground.
On my left, No. n was peering through his rifle 'sights,
apparently covering the scouts. No. 13 had his head on his

ii

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

arms and seemed to be asleep. No. 15 was scratching his head.
I moved over to No. n. We had been at the armory together,
but it was difficult to remember how he had looked in civilian
clothes. No. ii was thirty-four years old and his hair was
almost all gray, but he was tanned now and looked younger
in his uniform. As I reached him the sergeant wnistled and
I turned away.

The sergeant was back at the center of the line, sitting on
a stump. "First two men on the left," he called, "prepare to
rush!" Nos. 13 and 15 raised themselves until they were in
the position of a sprinter about to take off. "Rush!" Rifle
in hand, they rose and were away, running at top speed.
"Down!" the sergeant yelled. They both dived without choos-
ing cover, hitting the ground with a thud. "Break their god-
damn heads doin* it that way," the sergeant said without
emotion. "This is the right way to fall," he said. "There is
only one way to do a thing in the Army and that is the right
way." He ran along the line a few steps, then fell, twisting his
body so that within an instant after he hit the ground the
rifle was at his shoulder in the firing position. It was all done
easily and comfortably and the men were much impressed.
"That man is a Class A-one soldier," Stein said with admira-
tion.

The sergeant rose and brushed himself off. "O.K.," he
said. "Next two men on the right, prepare to rush. . . .
Rush!" The two men dashed forward, falling awkwardly.
"Next two men on the left," the sergeant called, "prepare to
rush!" I drew up my right leg and dug my toe into the

12

ACTION IN GEORGIA

ground. "Rush!" I sprang out, head down, rifle held di-
agonally across my chest. "Down!" There was a tree directly
in front and I threw myself at It. My knees hit dirt and I
twisted to the side, banging my elbow against a rock. I put
the gun to one side and sat up, rubbing my elbow. "Get that
god-damn head down!" the sergeant yelled. I lay down on
my stomach and tried to see if there were any casualties.
No. ii was crouched over his rifle, disposing of the enemy,
and the others seemed to have made the trip safely. I assumed
the firing angle and waited for something to happen. Be-
hind me the sergeant was ordering other men forward. Sud-
denly someone down the line said, "There's the enemy!"
Through the trees on the left I could see a skirmish line o£
actual men walking toward us. "O.K., men," our sergeant
said, making the most of our accidental meeting. "Let's sur-
prise those guys." Everyone stopped talking and faces took
on a strained, alert look. The other men could not see us and
continued to advance, walking slowly and silently, the way
the Western hero walks up the street to meet the bad man
just before the gun fight. As they came nearer the sergeant
told us to prepare to fire, and their leader must have heard
the click of the bolt of one of our rifles being pulled back,
because he held up his hand for them to stop. For a moment
there was no sound at all. A bird flew low across our line.
Suddenly our sergeant yelled "Fire!" and the clicks of our
triggers sounded very loud. The other men jumped a little,
then we all began to laugh. They came closer and we saw
that they were one of our own squads.

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

"You're cooked, Mac," No. n said to one of them. "I shot
you six times already."
"Go to hell," Mac said pleasantly.

A whistle blew in the distance and our sergeant stood up.
"Ten-minute break," he said. I leaned my rifle against a tree
and walked around. Every hour we got a ten-minute rest.
The other squad had moved away ; our sergeant was talking
to some of our men and I joined them. On the hill our scouts
had come out of concealment and were stretched out in the
sun. The men were ribbing the sergeant in double-talk.
Stein had his rifle over his knee and was gesturing toward
the inner parts. "The kravaswitch is broken," he was saying.

"You mean the bolt?" the sergeant asked.

"He means the kravasnatch," another man said. "The part
next to the warple."

The sergeant picked up the rifle and inspected it carefully.

"It's broken," Stein said firmly. "The lieutenant said I
should show it to you."

"Looks O.K. to me," the sergeant said. He stared doubt-
fully at the rifle and then at the men, but no one laughed.
"Beats me," he said finally. He handed the rifle back to Stein,
and then everyone laughed.

"What a connivo," one of the men said, hitting Stein on
the back.

The sergeant didn't look too pleased but he smiled. "I
thought it was some of your Jew talk," he said to Stein.

The men broke up to move back to their positions, but

M

ACTION IN GEORGIA

La Gattuta stayed to talk to the sergeant, and I decided to
remain, too. "You ever been to New York?" La Gattuta
asked. The sergeant was rolling a cigarette and he shook his
head slowly so as not to upset the tobacco. "I'd like to see
him in traffic," La Gattuta said to me. "What're you going to
do when you get out?" he asked the sergeant.

"Re-enlist," the sergeant said.

I asked him what he did before joining the Army.

"Worked as a bleacher in a print mill," he said.

"Belong to a union?" La Gattuta asked.

"Hell, no," the sergeant said. He finished rolling his
cigarette and lighted it. "I'd like to be one of those god-damn
soldiers of fortune, that's what I'd like to be," he said. "Only
they ain't no call for them no more." He looked as though
he would make a good soldier of fortune.

The ten minutes were nearly up, so I moved back to my
position. I lay on my back and looked up at the sky
through the trees. Next to me, No. n and No. 13 were dis-
cussing our regiment's food. "I hear it's better at the Twenty-
second," No. 1 1 was saying.

"Hah!" said No. 13. "If we're barking here, they're oinking
there."

The whistle blew and they both moved back to their places.
I maneuvered myself into a firing position. "First two men
on the left!" the sergeant shouted, and we were off again.
We advanced twice more, and then we were up to the hill.
Of! to one side I spotted the lieutenant leaning against a tree,
watching us. "Fix bayonets!" the sergeant called. At the top

15

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

of the hill one of the scouts turned around and raised his
rifle, which meant that the enemy was in sight. The sergeant
faced us and waved one arm from side to side. That was the
firing order. I looked through the rifle sights at a large tree
and simulated firing at an enemy soldier. No. u was getting
in two shots to my one. I hoped my protecting tree was thick
enough this time. Suddenly the sergeant held up his hand to
tell us to cease fire. The lieutenant was still watching. "Give
'em the cold steel!" the sergeant called.

"And let's hear some noise!" the lieutenant called.

We were going over the top. "Rush!" the sergeant
screamed. We all rose and charged up the hill. Everyone
began to yell, feebly at first, then louder, until the whole
forest was alive. No. n was bellowing like a bull, slashing
at trees with his bayonet; on my other side, Stein was laugh-
ing loudly and humorlessly. I did not know quite what to
yell, but I noticed that the lieutenant was watching closely.
"Hi-yo, Silver!" I hollered, leaping over the dead and
wounded. A few men were laughing but the rest looked
grim and excited. The rise grew steeper and the rifle began
to weigh me down. The noise was terrific, with all the men
yelling violently and the lieutenant shouting encouragement
from below. We reached the top in a last burst of energy
and spilled down into a little hollow. The sergeant held up
his hand to halt us, but some of the men overran, shadow-
boxing with their bayonets. The sergeant made circles in the
air with his hand, the signal for assembly, and we finally

16

ACTION IN GEORGIA

dribbled into column formation. All the men were panting;
some were coughing, their faces red from exertion. They
were still excited and kept moving around in place. The two
scouts came out of the underbrush to fall in. "You guys had
it easy," one of them said to Stein. "We had to crawl all over
the place."

"You should live so," Stein said.

We stood around catching our breath while the lieutenant
came slowly up the hill. "That was good work, men," he
said when he reached us. "But next time make more noise.
Show the enemy he's fighting Americans."

"Yes, sir," the sergeant said, saluting. The lieutenant
saluted in return, then walked off into the woods. The ser-
geant marched us down the hill to where we had started.
"We're goin' to do it again," he said. "And I want to hear
more noise." Several of the men sighed, but no one said
anything.

We attacked the hill again, Nos. 3 and 4 acting as scouts.
Then we attacked it again, cutting three minutes off the time
we had made before and not yelling so loud. When it came
my turn to be a scout, I ran too far in the open and the
sergeant said I'd have had my god-damn head cut right off.
The general idea seemed to be that if you captured the hill
enough times, you could keep it. After the sixth try the
whistle blew. It was the signal to assemble for the march
back to the barracks. I looked at my watch and was surprised
to find it was already four-thirty.

17

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

The sergeant lined us up once more and we marched
back to the glade. Other squads were also coming out of
the woods and we all lined up in platoon formation. The
lieutenant was standing at the head of the company. "You
did a fine job, men," he said when we were all assembled.
"Remember that these are the conditions under which you
will actually be fighting." He paused and looked meaningful.
"And the way things are shaping up, you men may be dodg-
ing bullets within three months." The ranks stirred at that
and several men turned to glance at each other. No one
looked enthusiastic. "Tenshun!" the lieutenant called. We
put on our packs, slung arms, and began the march back.
The lieutenant called for route step, which meant we could
talk, but no one spoke for a while. Finally one man began
to sing. Someone else joined him and soon most of the com-
pany was singing. They sang all the marching songs, re-
peating "Marching Through Georgia" to irritate the non-
coms. After each song there was a pause and then a man
would start another song and the rest would join in whether
or not they knew the words. The only dissension occurred
when someone began to sing "Over There" and the men
broke it up to sing "Over Here." By the time we marched
out of the woods and into the company area, the men were
all together, singing "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here."
When the lieutenant asked for a cadence count, they counted
loudly and cheerfully. It was still a fine afternoon and the
war was three thousand miles away.

—April 1941.
18

II. A ROLLER COASTER
IS WORSE

•HE

I HE ONLY infantrymen in the United States Army who
don't grouse much about the walking they have to do are
the parachute troops, who don't specialize in walking. They
are nevertheless classified as infantry, because their only mili-
tary justification is what they can do after they hit the ground.
If they can organize and proceed to their objective as an
infantry unit, they are good parachute troops. At present, all
of the parachute troops of the United States Army, compris-
ing four battalions, are stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia.
They are volunteers, either regulars or selectees, from other
branches of the infantry. Any unmarried soldier can join after
four months of infantry service and can quit whenever he
likes. The Army doesn't believe in asking a man to jump out
of a moving airplane unless the man wants wholeheartedly,
or at least halfheartedly, to jump.

The other day I went out to watch these troops in training,
and chose a morning when a group was having a workout
on the two parachute towers. They are two hitndred and fifty
feet high and remind you of the Parachute Jump at the
World's Fair. One tower, a "controlled" one, is almost exactly

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the same, for the chutes are guided up and down by wires.
The other tower is "free"; that is, the jumpers are set loose
at the top and drop as though they were really coming out of
a plane. Before parachute troops are permitted to j ump even
from the towers they have to go through a difficult training
period. For a few weeks they are taught body control, chute-
rigging, and the theory of manipulating a parachute in the
air. During this time the men do as much as four hours of
calisthenics a day, mostly tumbling exercises. One of the
tricks of landing safely is to tumble just right as you reach
the ground, to lessen the shock of hitting at ten or twelve
miles an hour.

After the calisthenics and other training on the ground
there are a couple of weeks of exercises on the towers. It is
six weeks, all told, before a man is allowed to jump from a
plane. The men I was to watch were completing their stint
on the towers. It was about seven-thirty in the morning when
I arrived, but the sun was already hot. There were few
clouds in the sky and the air had an early-morning stillness.
The towers were shining in the sun. They are painted red
and tipped with beacons to warn away planes during the
night. They looked like gigantic oil derricks except that each
had four jutting arms at the top. Long cables were suspended
from the arms of the controlled tower. Between the legs of
each tower was a little white house that contained the
machinery for -raising the chutes.

At the free tower, a sunburned young man wearing a
squash shirt with "Lt. Wood" stenciled on the front was

20

A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE

shouting directions through a megaphone, just starting the
day's training. Only three of the tower's four arms were
going to be used, I learned ; the north arm would not be, be-
cause the wind was from the north and would blow any
jumper into the tower when he was released. At a signal from
the lieutenant, a motor hummed inside the engine house and
a hemispheric metal shell the size and shape of a parachute
descended on a wire from each of three arms. Three men
waited under the arms with parachutes and when the shells
reached the ground they hooked their chutes to the insides
of the shells. It was about as if one handleless umbrella top
had been fitted inside another. Each chute had the usual
shroud lines descending from it, and to them was attached
a harness. After a jumper gets into this harness, he puts on
a plastic helmet, which gives him an awesome appearance^
Then the chute is raised about fifteen feet and halted while
the jumper makes sure his shroud lines are not tangled.

As the three men got into their harnesses, I noticed that
each one had a slip of paper between his teeth. "Tells him
which way the wind's blowing when he's up there," Lieu-
tenant Wood explained. The man on arm No. i was ready
first, and Lieutenant Wood ordered his chute taken aloft.
The machinery started to hum again and the jumper rose
into the air. "Take up No. 2!" Lieutenant Wood shouted.
No. 2 rose, pulling at his pants. "Take up No. 3!'* the lieu-
tenant shouted. The third man shot up.

No. i had been stopped about ten feet from the top. He
released the paper from his mouth and it fluttered off toward

21

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the tower. "Slip to the left!" Lieutenant Wood yelled at him
through the megaphone. I could see the man, small but dis-
tinct, reach over and grasp the shroud lines to his left. "Re-
lease No. i!" the lieutenant called. The machinery hummed
and No. i continued upward. There was a click as the shell
hit the top, the chute was released, and the man came swing-
ing down. "Check your oscillation!" Lieutenant Wood
shouted. The jumper pulled on his shroud lines and reduced
his swinging. He had almost reached the ground, and I
could see his face tense as he battled the chute. He was com-
ing down with his back to the wind, which is a bad way to
land, and Lieutenant Wood shouted, "Body turn! Body
turn!" The jumper quickly crossed his arms over his head
and twisted his body around. He was about half-way around
when he hit the ground. I thought that at the very least the
breath would be knocked out of him, but he went into a
neat back somersault and arose quickly to pull in the open
chute. Several men ran over to help him and in less than a
minute he was walking toward us with the chute under his
arm. "Next time make your body turn sooner," Lieutenant
Wood said as he passed.

"Yes, sir," the man said.

After receiving shouted instructions from the lieutenant,
No. 2 and No. 3 were released. Both landed nicely, one roll-
ing over as he hit and the other keeping his feet. The one
who kept his feet looked pleased until Lieutenant Wood
turned the megaphone toward him and shouted, "You don't
get any medals for staying on your feet, Murphy!"

22

A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE

"Yes, sir," Murphy said.

There were two sets of chutes for each arm, so one group
of men could quickly follow another, and three more men
were already in harness.

Lieutenant Wood told me things would go along like that
the rest of the morning, so I walked over to the controlled
tower. A group of men were sitting around there watching a
lieutenant jump. His name, "Lt. Edmonds," was written on
adhesive tape and pasted over the breast pocket of his over-
alls. He was making one jump after another. The training
instructor, a sergeant, stood by with a notebook and a pencil
in one hand. Lieutenant Edmonds would be hauled up, then
the release would click and he would drop straight down,
the chute being guided by wires. He seemed to be coming at
about the same speed as that of the men at the free tower,
but there was a rubber mattress to break his fall. There was
no possibility of his rolling over, since the wires guiding the
parachute kept it from reaching the ground. He was sup-
posed to lean a little forward when he hit but he always
leaned backward. He would go up looking very determined
and come down looking even more determined, and when
he hit he would struggle hard to lean forward, but after each
jump the sergeant would shake his head, and he'd be hauled
up and do it over again. The men watched him solemnly.
Finally the lieutenant leaned forward as he landed and the
sergeant nodded and made an entry in his notebook. The
lieutenant, who was sweating, unstrapped his harness and

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

said, "God-damn it." The sergeant laughed and the other
men smiled.

The men began jumping and I sat watching them take
their turns. If one didn't land correctly, the sergeant made
him go up again until he did. I asked one of the men sitting
by me if anyone had ever been hurt on the tower, and he
shook his head. "You can't get hurt," he said. His accent
sounded familiar and I asked if he were from the North.

"I used to drive a route for Best & Company in Jersey City,"
he said. "Isn't this a hell of a place?"

He was a small, sandy-haired Irishman who had been
drafted in January. I asked him why he joined the parachutes.

"Listen," he said earnestly, as if he had thought it all out
before. "It's a job. It's a real job. They treat you like a man.
They don't treat you like no lousy soldier." He started roll-
ing a cigarette. "Besides," he said, "you get dough you can
live on." The pay in the parachute battalions is at least $50
higher per grade than in any other branch of the infantry. A
private gets the usual base pay of $30 a month and an extra
$50 for jump pay. This makes the parachute battalions the
highest-paid outfits, except the Air Corps, in the Army. I
asked him if most of the other parachute men were in it for
the money.

"Money," he said. "Or excitement. Or some of them just
don't know any better." He lit his cigarette. "I ain't been
back to Jersey since I was drafted," he said reflectively. Just
then the sergeant called out his name and he stood up

24

A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE

quickly. "See you later," he said. I watched him slip on
the harness and start aloft, still smoking the cigarette.

Then I saw that most of the men were looking off into
the distance. Far above a flying field a mile or so from where
we stood, a plane was making slow circles. Suddenly a little
dot came tumbling out, and then another and another. Out
of each dot came a spiral of silk and then a flash of white
as the parachute opened. "One," a man near by counted,
"two, three, four, five," as they came. Everyone else had
stopped talking and was watching too. The man counted to
twelve, and then everyone began to talk again. The dozen
parachutes floated languidly in the sky beneath the plane and
disappeared behind some trees. By that time the Irishman
was back, sitting next to me again. "I wish I had been up
there with them," he said.

A few days later I went to the flying field, having got per-
mission to go up with a batch of jumpers. Again I arrived
early. It had been raining and the morning was damp and
foggy. The fog was lifting very slowly, and it was obvious
there would be a wait. Three large transport planes stood on
the field — one bright silver and the two others a dull brown-
green. A group of men in overalls sat around in front of one
hangar, looking at the sky.

I went inside the hangar and introduced myself to the
parachute officer. He was a sparse-haired young lieutenant
named Bassett, and he advised me to check with the pilot

25

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to be sure there was an extra parachute, which I could use in
an emergency. There was one. The ceiling was still not high
enough for jumping, so I sat around with the men outside
the hangar. Those who were to jump that morning had al-
ready made four jumps from planes. This fifth jump would
entitle them to an emblem worn by qualified jumpers. None
of them looked frightened, although a few seemed nervous.
Fear usually develops in parachute jumpers somewhere be-
tween the third and sixth jumps, if it develops at all. The
first few jumps provide the excitement of intense novelty
without a completely clear realization of what is involved.
It is at the fourth or fifth jump that the crisis generally comes.
Continual jumping gives the men a certain amount of confi-
dence, but some jumpers get more panicky as they go on,
figuring that each good jump raises the odds against another
good jump. It is not uncommon for men to lose their nerve
after they have been jumping a long time, and that is taken
by the other men almost as a matter of course. I have heard
the theory that only a fool or an impossibly reasonable man
would be able to jump without any fear whatever. The
reasonable jumper would have no fear because he would
know the parachute and parachute-releasing devices used by
the United States Army are as foolproof as any man-made
thing can be. The safety record of the parachute battalions
is amazingly high; there has been only one death since the
battalions were formed fifteen months ago, and that was the
result of an imperfectly packed parachute.
Some of the men were playing blackjack with an old deck

26

A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE

of cards. A few were reading newspapers or pulp magazines.
Most of them were talking or sitting quietly, looking at
the sky.

"Three hundred smackers!" one sergeant was saying.
"Three hundred smackers for a set of lousy furniture!"

"Well, she paid half, didn't she?" another sergeant said.

"I still don't think that's right, letting a woman pay for
furniture," a corporal said.

"She's going to use it," the first sergeant pointed out.

"She's'going to use half of it," said the second sergeant.

"Well, she only paid for half of it," the first sergeant said.

"I still don't think it's right," said the corporal.

The ceiling was lifting rapidly now and the sun was start-
ing to break through. Lieutenant Bassett came to the door of
the hangar and called, "Flight i, inside!" Twelve men got
up and slowly entered. They didn't talk as they went in, but
when they came out wearing chutes and helmets five min-
utes later they were talking loudly. Some of the other men
stood up and shouted to them, as if they were cheering the
home team as it came out on the field to warm up before a
game. The jumpers talked a little too loudly and the others
were a little too encouraging. "Hurry back!" one called.
"Don't forget to come down, Fred!" somebody else yelled.
Fred turned and waved; his face was drawn.

The twelve jumpers climbed into the silver plane and I
climbed in after them, taking a seat up front. There were
seven seats down each side of the aisle. At the rear of the

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

cabin, standing beside a doorless opening in one side of the
plane, were Lieutenant Walters, the jump master, who is in
charge of the jumping, and a noncom assistant. On the
floor near them was a life-size dummy wearing two para-
chutes. This was Oscar. The man closest to me told me
Oscar would be thrown out first to test the wind.

I quickly learned from him a few of the elementary facts
about parachute work. Each jumper wears two parachutes,
one in front and the other in back. Attached to the back
parachute is a folded rope called a static line, which, before
the jump, is unfolded and hooked to a steel wire running
along the ceiling of the plane. When a man jumps, the line
pulls the chute out of its pack so that it can open. The static
line is strong enough to withstand the pull, but the cord
which attaches it to the parachute breaks as the man drops,
freeing the chute from the plane. Attached to the front para-
chute is an emergency rip cord. As the jumper falls, he
counts, "One thousand, two thousand, three thousand." If
by then he doesn't feel a jerk, indicating his back parachute
has opened, he pulls the emergency rip cord and the second
chute opens.

When everyone was seated, the motor started and the
plane taxied to the center of the field. The motor roared, the
plane trembled, the ground streaked past, and we were in the
air. Through a window I could see the ground dropping
away and the hangars tilting as we banked. The jumpers,
with their chutes and helmets, all looked like Buck Rogers.
No one said much; a few men were smoking. The jumper

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A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE

behind me was talking to the man across the aisle, who
looked sick. "I wish to hell there was some other way of
getting up here," the second man was saying.

"Don't you like to jump ?" I asked.

"I love to jump," he said. "I just don't like these damned
airplanes."

"Don't mind him," the man back of me said. "Nothing
satisfies him."

We were circling over the jumping field now, and Lieu-
tenant Walters leaned out the doorway. Then he and the
noncom hauled Oscar to his feet. They hooked the static
line to the steel wire and took Oscar by his arms and legs.
"O.K.," the lieutenant said. They both swung the dummy
back and then out, letting it sail into space. The lieutenant
looked after Oscar and nodded. "Not much wind," he called
out comfortingly.

We were swinging in another circle now. The man back
of me lit a cigarette and then put it out. "No more thrill,"
he said sadly. "You jump two or three times and you don't
feel anything any more." There were drops of sweat on his
forehead. "I'm disappointed," he said. "You just come up and
fall out. You don't have to do a thing." He lit another ciga-
rette. "A roller coaster is worse," he said. He wet his lips,
then wiped them with the back of his hand. We were over
the field again.

"All right!" Lieutenant Walters called. "Everyone stand
up." The men stood up quickly. "Hook your static lines," he
said. The men unfolded their lines and hooked them to the

29

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steel wire. The noncom went down the aisle inspecting each
man's chutes. Lieutenant Walters was on his knees by the
opening. "Stand in the door!" he shouted. The men crowded
aft, each man pressed against the one in front of him. I went
to a window to see better and suddenly noticed that one of
the men had not risen. He was still sitting in his place, look-
ing straight ahead. Some of the jumpers noticed him too, but
none of them said anything. They were massed before the
doorway. The first man gripped the sides of the door, brac-
ing himself for his leap. They all stood there for what seemed
a very long time, and then the roar of the motor subsided and
the plane slowed up. "Go!" yelled Lieutenant Walters. The
first man flung himself out and the others went quickly after
him. There was no pause; they went out in a rush. Through
the window I could see them come flying out of the plane, the
wind twisting and flattening them, their faces jammed into
fierce knots. I had a flash of each man as he was whipped out
of sight, the long thread of silk unwinding after him. I ran
to another window and finally saw them below, swinging
peacefully now, swaying in wide arcs from side to side,
eleven chutes in full bloom. Then the plane banked and I
couldn't see them any more.

I sat back in one of the seats and looked at the man who
did not jump. He was still staring straight ahead. His face
was white and he looked like a knocked-out prizefighter who
has not yet fully recovered. Lieutenant Walters and the non-
com pulled in the whipping static lines, unhooked the other
ends from the wire, and piled them in a corner. Then they

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A ROLLER COASTER IS WORSE

sat down by the man. Lieutenant Walters offered him a
cigarette, but he shook his head. Neither the lieutenant nor
the noncom said anything to him the rest of the way down,
but when we landed and he got off, Lieutenant Walters
patted him on the shoulder. I asked the lieutenant if many
men failed to jump like that. Only a few, he said. I asked
what happened to them. "They get transferred immediately,"
he said. "They don't even sleep in the barracks that night."

I waited at the field until the jumpers returned in a truck.
Hopping off, they headed for the hangar, talking noisily.
They all looked happy and excited. "Enough air up there?"
asked a man who had not yet jumped that day.

"Boy oh boy!" one of the jumpers said. "What air!"

—September 1941.

III. JUKE JOINT

IHE

[HE PRINCIPAL industry of the small town of Phenix
City, Alabama, is sex, and its customer is the Army. Lo-
cated ten miles from Fort Benning, Georgia, the town is at
least eighty per cent devoted to the titillation and subsequent
pillage of that group it affectionately calls "Uncle Sam's
soldier boys."

I became acquainted with Phenix following my initial
month of recruit drill, when the selectees were first allowed
to leave the post. During those thirty days we had heard ap-
proximately ninety-four lectures dealing with various sordid
aspects of the town. There were some twenty thousand re-
cruits at Benning for these talks. Our first free Saturday
night, not more than ten, or at the most twelve, thousand hit
the road to Phenix.

The first place to go in Phenix City is usually Frankie's.
That is not the real name, but it will do. It is the name of
the woman who owns the place, a determined and ageless fe-
male with red hair and a strong pioneer streak, only slightly
perverted. Frankie's is reached by cutting off the paved main
street after it* has passed the town's two blocks of stores
and climbed the hill past the new courthouse, and then hik-
ing about a mile up a narrow dirt road. The place itself is
like the other sagging frame houses that line the back streets

32

JUKE JOINT

of Phenix City, but it has a sign above the porch that says
"Cafe" and on Saturday night there is a long line of taxi-
cabs out front. Some of the soldiers walk from the Georgia
town of Columbus, where the bus from camp stops, but
only if they feel healthy. Too many bloody men have been
found in Phenix alleys. The taxis only charge a quarter a
head and for another quarter they will let you in on a number
of other good things, and also include the transportation.

This Saturday night was a week after payday and the
place was jammed. Frankie herself was behind the bar,
seeing that the percentage of foam td beer was not more
than half. Nothing harder than beer was sold at Frankie's;
there was no necessity for anything else. The one square
room that comprised the cafe was ugly and low-ceilinged.
Now it was packed with soldiers. They stood five deep at
the bar that ran across one side of the room. They filled the
small dance floor and swallowed the juke box that stood in
a corner. They sat on and around the dirty tables that dotted
the rest of the room and spilled into the cubicle that had once
been the kitchen, but now held three slot machines and a
dice table.

There were about fifteen girls in the room. They were very
young; some did not seem any more than sixteen or seven-
teen. They wore cotton dresses and low-heeled shoes and
some did not even wear make-up. A few sat at tables, but
most of them walked around, stopping every few feet to
speak to one of the soldiers. Every so often one would talk
a little longer with a soldier and then the two of them would

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walk out of the room, through the cubicle, and out a door
at the other end. They were usually gone about ten minutes,
and then they would return, the soldier grinning or shame-
faced or defiant; and the girl would continue to walk around
or perhaps sit at a table and have a Coca-Cola.

I finally got a bottle of beer from the bar and took it to
a table at the edge of the dance floor, where there were some
men from my company. They were drinking rye from a
bottle and watching the girls. The juke box was screaming
"You Are My Sunshine." It was hot and smoky in the room
and I drank my beer quickly. As soon as I had finished, a
girl came over and took the bottle. She looked very young
and she was wearing a cheap housedress that ended an inch
abqve her knee. "You want another beer?" she asked. I
shook my head and one of the other soldiers said, "Sit down,
Mary." The girl sat down without comment. She said some-
thing to the man next to her, who shook his head. She
looked around at the rest of us and we all shook our heads.
"Oh, well," Mary said.

"Have a beer," a soldier named Pat said.

"Don't mind if I do," Mary said. Pat got up and went to
the bar and Mary reached down to loosen her saddle shoes.
"My feet hurt," she said. She looked like the girls whom I
had seen working in the town's textile mill.

"I know you," one of the men said. "You work in the dime
store."

"That's Peggy," the girl said. "You boys always take me
for Peggy."

34

JUKE JOINT

"I could swear you were sisters," the man said.

"You're crazy" Mary said. Pat returned with the beers and
the girl drank hers thirstily. "Well," she said when she was
finished, "I got to get back to work."

"How's business?" Pat asked.

"Not good, not bad," Mary said. She stood up, glancing
toward the door. Standing in the doorway were two M.P.'s,
their eyes searching the crowd. Frankie waved to them from
behind the bar and they waved back, still looking through
the crowd. When they were satisfied they turned and went
out. Mary jerked her head after them. "That don't hurt my
business," she said scornfully. She walked off into the crowd
and I stood up to stretch my legs. I said good-by to the other
men, who were trying to decide what they could do and not
be gypped, and went across the room to the cubicle. At the
entrance was a blind man holding a cup. A sign in his hat
said "God Bless You One and All." Whenever someone put
a coin in his cup he would spill it into his hand, feel it very
carefully, and then place it in his pocket.

There was a crowd of soldiers around the dice table that
occupied most of the little gambling room. Three soldiers
and two civilians in shirtsleeves were shooting craps. One
of the civilians was the house man; the other looked like a
shill of some sort, but I couldn't be sure. One of the soldiers,
a corporal, had a pile of bills before him and his face was
flushed and excited. The other two soldiers had some money,
but not as much. The civilians kept their money hidden.

The corporal had the dice and was evidently riding a

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streak. He threw two passes and then made a four. The other
two soldiers watched him enviously, but the civilians didn't
seem very interested. The corporal threw another seven; he
had about a hundred dollars in his pile. He threw a six and
the spectators cheered. "He'll make that easy," whispered a
soldier next to me. The corporal made his point on the next
throw and the soldier nudged me happily. "Smart boy," he
said. "Must be using his own dice." The corporal then
threw a ten, and in rapid succession an eight, a five and a
seven. Everyone sighed except the civilians, but the soldier
next to me nodded wisely. "Just making it look good," he
said. The dice went to one of the other soldiers and I slipped
away from the table. There were no windows in the little
room and the smoke made the air like lead. A slight draft
blew from the door that kept opening at the other end of
the cubicle, but that didn't help much. I watched some of the
soldiers lose money in the slot machines, lost a few nickels
myself, then returned to the main room.

Standing against a wall was a very fat man in civilian
clothes. He wore an old windbreaker, a dirty pair of pants,
and a slouch hat, pushed back on his head. He was leaning
on a thick cane, watching the crowd. His feet were in carpet
slippers. His name was Hancock and he was the bouncer. I
had been introduced to him once, so I went over to say hello.
He didn't remember me, but took my word that we had
met. I asked him why he wore slippers and he pulled up his
right trouser leg to show a bandage around his foot. "Got
kicked by a G. I. boot," he said. I asked what was new. "Can't

36

JUKE JOINT

complain," he said. "For Saturday it's a quiet night." Just
then one of the girls came over and said there was trouble
by the juke box. "Excuse me," Hancock said, courteously. He
limped across the room, his stomach running interference
for the rest of his body. A soldier was drunk at the juke
box and did not like the selection being played. He was
hammering on the window when Hancock tapped him on
the shoulder. He turned around full of fight, but Hancock
spoke to him quietly and after a moment took him by the
arm and walked him to the door. The soldier turned when
they reached the door, but Hancock pushed him gently out-
side and shut the door after him. Then he limped back and
resumed his place against the wall. "Boys that age shouldn't
drink liquor," he said, shaking his head.

We stood for a while without talking. The room was still
packed tight. Frankie's red head shone through the smoke.
The girls still walked around, bored and weary, and the
juke box still screamed "You Are My Sunshine." The soldiers
stood in little knots or sat back at the tables, eyeing the girls.
They were all dressed very carefully, with their insignia
shining, but most of them looked as if they had gotten into
the wrong place.

I stood against the wall wondering what to do. There was
a burst of voices from the gambling room and Mary trotted
out. "You better go in there," she said to Hancock. Han-
cock sighed and limped off. Mary stayed behind, taking his
place against the wall. "My feet hurt," she said. She took
one foot out of her shoe and wrinkled the toes appreciatively.

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I asked her how long she had been at Frankie's. "This is my
first week," she said. "I used to be at Twin Oak." I asked
why she had left. "You make more money here," she said.
Twin Oak was a place like Frankie's, about six miles out
of town. It was owned by the former chief of police, who
also owned another place in town. He used to own them
while in office, but quit the police department when asked by
the respectable element to choose between business and
pleasure.

I asked Mary if she preferred Frankie's and she shrugged.
"At the other place we got officers." I admitted the distinc-
tion. "And this place you got to walk around all the time.
But I like it here," she said. "It's more democratic." I asked
if the police ever bothered her and she laughed. "That don't
hurt my business," she said loudly. She laughed again. "You
know what? I'm a food handler. I got a card to prove it."
She dug into the pockets of her dress, but came up empty-
handed. "All the girls are food handlers," she said. "Every
damned one of us." She seemed very proud of the fact, al-
though all the girls who work in places like Frankie's are
classified in Phenix City as food handlers. What this means
is not exactly certain, since there were still 1082 new venereal
disease cases at Benning in the past eight months. Lately,
however, there had been a renewed vice crusade by the city
authorities, and the F.B.I, was finally summoned. The Army
is vehement in its demands that these places be abolished,
but the responsibility is still a civil one. And when the lure
of easy money and girls will bring thirty thousand paying

38

JUKE JOINT

customers to a town every night, the merchants who own the
town are likely to consider health a peacetime luxury.

By now someone had broken the monopoly on the juke
box and it was playing "I'm Walking the Floor Over You."
Mary was whistling and tapping the floor to the music. "I'm
walking the floor over you," she sang nasally. "Please tell
me just what should I do." A soldier walking past told her
what she should do, and she aimed a kick at him. The kick
missed, but the momentum carried her away from the wall
and she started her trip around the room again.

Hancock came out of the cubicle, leading another soldier
by the arm. It was one of the soldiers from the dice table and
he was very angry. He was gesturing wildly and making
attempts to get back into the cubicle, but Hancock led him
firmly to the door. He was not so gentle this time and tapped
the soldier with his cane as he pushed him out. Then he
limped back and leaned against the wall. "What kind of a
home do these boys come from?" he asked me. "He says the
dice were crooked. Why should they be crooked?"

I told him that the soldier wasn't the only one who felt
that way.

"They're not smart," Hancock said. "They don't use their
heads. Don't they know the odds against them in an honest
game? Why should we make it crooked?"

There was no short answer to this, so I changed the sub-
ject and invited Hancock to the bar for a beer. The crowd
had thinned there and we found a place at the end. Next
to us a soldier with the high boots of a parachutist was

39

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

arguing unsteadily with one who wore the patch of an
armored division on his sleeve. "I wouldn't be seen in a tank
for all the money in the world," the parachutist was saying
emphatically. "Not for a hundred dollars."

"It's because you're old-fashioned," the other said.

"It's because a tank is uncomfortable," the parachutist ex-
plained patiently. "A tank is a messy machine."

"A tank is very useful," the other said.

"Now you take the sky," the parachutist said. "What
could be cleaner?"

Frankie came over to serve us and Hancock introduced
me. "Howdy," Frankie said, professionally. Her mouth
opened and closed in a short smile, showing bad teeth. She
had a huge, matronly front and her close-bitten nails were
painted blood-red. She looked like a suburban mah Jong
player who played for keeps. "You being treated all right?"
she asked me.

"He's in my hands," Hancock said.

"Good," Frankie said. "Anything I can do for you, let me
know." We ordered bottled beer and she had one of the
girls behind the bar bring it to us. "Here's to the brave young
men in the Army," Hancock said. I had the bottle tilted up
when I saw four men in civilian clothes come through the
front door. They stood for a moment in the doorway, look-
ing around, and then walked slowly toward the bar. They
all wore hats and their jackets were open and I had seen
enough movies to know they were the Law.

I started to find the back door, but Hancock pulled me

40

JUKE JOINT

over to his old spot against the wall. Frankie had also seen
the men and stood quietly behind the bar, not smiling as she
had at the M.P.'s. No one else paid much attention to them.
The men reached the bar and stopped and still the crowd
did not notice them. Then they began pushing people away
from the bar and the hush started there and spread through
the room until the juke box was suddenly much louder than
usual. All the soldiers stood up and a few made a quick
break for the door. The men paid no attention to these. They
cleared the crowd from the bar and one of the men took out
a notebook and said, "O.K., Frankie." Frankie looked at him
and then turned to the girls working behind the bar and
said, "Get out the beer."

It was all very smooth and quick, as if it had been done
many times before. The crowd settled back when they saw
what the men were after, and now made a path for them as
they carried the cases of beer outside. I noticed some soldiers
slip out the back way, but none of the girls left and I could
still hear the slot machines clicking. The man with the note-
book took down figures as the beer went outside. Frankie
talked to him as he wrote, but he kept shrugging his
shoulders as if disclaiming any responsibility. After a few
minutes the novelty and fear wore off and the room slid back
to normal. The people who had been at the bar waited to
resume their places, but the rest of the crowd moved off to
other parts of the room. In about ten minutes the men had
cleared the bar of beer. The man with the notebook wrote
something on a piece of paper and handed it to Frankie.

41

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

She said something in a low voice and he laughed. Then he
tipped his hat and went out after the other men.

The crowd surged back against the bar as soon as they
left and the girls served up Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper. I
turned to Hancock, but before I could speak he assured me
that everything was all right. "It's only the State Liquor
Control boys," he said. "They do this all the time." I said
I thought the sale of beer was allowed in Alabama. "Not
without no license," Hancock said.

Except for the absence of beer nothing seemed changed.
Hancock went ofif in response to another girl's call and I
walked around the room trying to find some fresh air. The
juke box was playing "Good-by, Dear, I'll Be Back in a Year,"
and some soldiers stood around the machine giving each
lyric a Bronx cheer. I wandered past the blind man into the
little gambling room. The dice game was . still going and
there were five soldiers playing now instead of three. I
recognized only the corporal who had been in the money.
Now there were only a few dollars before him and he looked
scared. The house man had also changed, but the other
civilian was still there, pocketing his money as he won. He
seemed to be winning more consistently now. The door at
the far end of the cubicle had been left open and the trickle
of cool air felt good. Occasionally one of the couples going
through would close the door after them, and then the house
man would walk patiently across the room and open it again.

After the dice game I put a few more nickels in the slot
machines, then wandered back into the main room. I

42

JUKE JOINT

searched for someone I knew, but all the faces were strange
in the familiar way most soldiers have to one another. A
soldier hurried past me toward the front door, his face drawn
and white. A girl came up, but I shook my head and she con-
tinued on around the room. There was a bad smell in this
part of the room, so I moved away. The juke box was shriek-
ing "Well Have to Slap the Dirty Jap." I looked at my watch
and was surprised to see it was not even midnight. I started
to find Hancock when suddenly there was a loud whistle
and I looked up to see the two M.P.'s standing in the door-
way. "At ease!" one of them shouted. "All men of the i9th
Engineers report to their barracks at once." He banged on
the wall for emphasis and repeated the sentence. Then the
two of them turned and went out.

This time the noise did not return to the room as quickly
as it had when the Liquor Control men left. We had all seen
this happen too often before, the same words in the .same
public places, and the next day an outfit gone from the post.
The soldiers looked at each other and a few men stood up
around the room and walked slowly to the door. The other
soldiers watched them go and as soon as they were out every-
one began to talk again and laugh, even more loudly than
before. The air was getting more and more foul. I found
Hancock and said good-night. He shook my hand warmly
and told me to hurry back. As I left the room a soldier was
being sick in a corner. The juke box was screaming
"Good-by, Mama, I'm Off to Yokohama."

—December 1941.

43

IV. A NIGHT IN THE
GUARDHOUSE

A,

ARMY guardhouse is not difficult to get into, if you
are not particular when you get out. It is as exclusive as
Groton, however, if you want to be admitted for one night
only, and then out of sociological curiosity. I had to go all
the way up to a full colonel to get permission to spend a
night in the guardhouse.

The day selected for this venture was a recent Saturday
after payday. Around ten o'clock that evening, I presented
myself at the gate in the barbed-wire fence surrounding the
guardhouse and asked the guard to let me in.

"What's the matter with you?" the guard asked suspi-
ciously.

I explained my mission and, after I had produced mul-
tiple identification, he said he would call the sergeant in
charge of the guardhouse night detail. The sergeant had
been told I was coming and, except for the guard, was the
only one in the place who knew I was not a bona-fide, or
involuntary, prisoner. The sergeant, a tall, plump Southerner
named Taylor, with a smooth baby face and very cold blue
eyes, came to the gate and walked me back across the grounds
to the guardhouse. This is a low, red-brick building, about

44

A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

twenty years old, which has the ugly, formidable appearance
of most corrective institutions. Near its entrance are several
tents, which house the guards and some M.P.'s. A prisoner
in blue denims, with the letter "P" chalked on his back, was
picking up trash around the tents. Sergeant Taylor led me
up the steps of the building and inside, then through a door
of steel bars into a large, unoccupied room, where he ex-
plained I would be quartered.

At the back of the room were two high, barred windows
and in one corner was a pile of mattresses and blankets.
There was a drinking fountain against one wall and an
electric clock, but no furniture. The walls were of tile and
gave the room the damp, musty smell of a subway. Sergeant
Taylor explained that this was known as the cooling-off
room, where they put what he called the transients — all the
prisoners picked up during the night. Such prisoners were
booked in the morning and assigned to more permanent
quarters. Only in rare cases were soldiers released after one
night, Taylor said, looking at me as if to say how well off
I was. He lifted one of the thin mattresses ofl the pile and
dropped it on the floor, sending a small cloud of dust into
the air. "You can sleep on that," he said. He looked moodily
at the mattress and then threw another on top of it. "Floor's
kind of hard," he said apologetically.

It was still too early for new prisoners — on Saturday night
they start arriving sometime after eleven — so Taylor and I
went to his office for a talk. A prisoner with a "P" on his

45

K E E P YOUR HEAD DOWN

back was waiting there with a large piece of chocolate cake,
which he offered to Taylor. The sergeant took the cake and
thanked him politely, and the man left. I asked Taylor how
it happened that the prisoners were allowed to wander
around, and he explained that this man was a parolee. Some
of the prisoners are even allowed, as a reward for good be-
havior, to leave the grounds for several hours, provided they
return at a specified time. The guardhouse at my camp can
accommodate about two hundred and fifty prisoners, and
usually does. Most of them are charged with drunkenness or
insubordination or being A.W.O.L. All really serious of-
fenders are sent, after preliminary confinement in the guard-
house, to a federal penitentiary.

Taylor told me that most of the men work outside around
the post during the day, usually on menial jobs. In the guard-
house all the prisoners except the transients sleep in dormi-
tories and eat in mess halls, just like virtuous soldiers. After
breakfast at six they are led out under guard to clean streets,
haul refuse, and otherwise police the post. They work from
eight to four, which is an hour less than most soldiers put in,
and then return for supper. The evening is relatively free;
lights out is at nine o'clock. On the whole the life of a
prisoner is no more monastic than that of other soldiers,
most of whom are either too broke or too tired at the end
of a day to do anything but go to sleep.

I asked Taylor how he liked being a jailer, and he said
he didn't mind. "It's kind of restful," he said. Before being
assigned to the guardhouse, he had been an M.P. doing patrol

A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

duty in town. Sitting there in the office with a gun on his hip,
he looked like the picture I have always had of an old-time
Western bad man, and I asked him half seriously if he had
ever killed a man.

"No," Taylor said earnestly, taking a bite of the chocolate
cake, "but there's one in town I didn't miss by much."

"Who is that?" I asked.

"One of them town police," Taylor said. "Tried to take a
prisoner away from me once. I nearly killed him then."

"Why didn't you?" I asked.

"Well," Taylor said, seriously, "it would have given the
M.P.'s a bad name."

Taylor finished the cake and rose, wiping his hands on a
convenient blotter. "I'm goin' to sleep," he said. "You all
ready?" I followed him down the hall to the cooling-ofl
room. Taylor closed the door after me and locked it. I was
alone in the room. "Anything you want, you holler for the
guard at the gate," he said. "He'll open the door for you if
you want to get your hands washed out here." Although the
lights were off in the rest of the guardhouse, one light was
kept burning in the transients' quarters. I moved my mat-
tresses next to one wall in order to reduce the chances of
being stepped on, got a blanket from the pile, took off my
shoes, and lay down. It was then about eleven o'clock and
the guardhouse was very still. The next thing I knew, the
door was being opened and I saw a private being pushed
into the room by an M.P. The M.P., I figured, had brought

47

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

the man in from town. The clock showed that I had been
asleep for two hours. The soldier, who was the only person
in the room besides myself, paid no attention to me but
went straight to the pile of mattresses, laid one out on the
floor, took a blanket, flopped down, pulled the blanket up
around his neck, and went right to sleep. The M.P. was
watching through the bars, and I asked him what the man
was in for. "What the hell business is it of yours?" the M.P.
asked, reasonably.

After he left I got up for a drink of water. There was no
sound but the snoring of the other prisoner. He looked
middle-aged, with the weatherbeaten face of an old soldier.
I was going back to bed when the door clanged open again
and another private was pushed in by another M.P. This
soldier walked back to the door as soon as the M.P. was
out of sight and said something unprintable. Then he turned
toward me. "/ told him," he said. He seemed satisfied. He
looked around the room and discovered the sleeping man.
"He'll get a crick in his neck sleeping like that," he said. He
went over to the sleeper and kicked him in the rear. "Hey!"
he shouted. The other man did not stir. "The hell with him,"
the new arrival said, walking away. He came over to where
I was sitting on my mattress and sat down beside me. "My
name's Harlow," he said. "I'm in very high spirits. The
M.P.'s picked me up because these are no days for high
spirits." He stood up unsteadily and took off his shirt. "I
think I'll sing," he said. I tried to quiet him, but he was feel-

A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

ing too good. "When the spring comes back to Boston," he
sang, "in her garden by the sea."

In a few seconds the guard, who must have heard Harlow
distinctly from his station at the gate, showed up in the cor-
ridor outside our door. "What the hell goes on here?" he
said angrily.

"I was singing," Harlow said.

"Well, stop singing," the guard said.

"Fall on your face," Harlow said pleasantly.

The guard came closer to the door and looked through
the bars.

"Go on," Harlow said. "Do me something."

"You want to see the provost marshal?" the guard said.

"I seen him once," Harlow said. "He ain't so hot."

The guard stood there for a moment, visibly searching
for a crushing remark. "O.K., wise guy. You'll find out," he
finally said, and walked away.

"What a jerk," Harlow said.

I made an oral attempt to get Harlow of! his feet and onto
a mattress before the guard returned and shot him, but this
was his night. "I can lick any man in the Army," he said
loudly. I pointed out that it was a large army, containing
many ex-prizefighters. "Well," Harlow said, looking mean-
ingfully at me, "I can lick any man in this room." He was
possibly preparing to elaborate on this when the guard re-
turned with two M.P.'s and another prisoner. "Smitty!"
Harlow cried.

49

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

"God-damn it," the new prisoner said obviously piqued,
"you beat me to it!"

The M.P.'s and the guard shoved Smitty into the room
and left, shaking their heads. He waved amiably after them.
"Nice boys," he said.

"They stink," Harlow said.

"They ain't so bad," Smitty said. "They just ain't some o£
them very smart."

"You been fighting again ?" Harlow asked. Smitty nodded.

"Some woman, I bet," Harlow said. Smitty nodded. He
was a tall, thin private, somewhat dishevelled. "I guess that's
just what women do to me," he said.

"Who'd you fight with?" Harlow asked.

"Everybody," Smitty said, his face lighting up. "Every-
body I could get my hands on."

The arrival of a friend seemed to have a calming effect on
Harlow and he soon joined Smitty in making up a bed. I
returned to my mattresses. The clock said one-thirty. The
prisoners began to arrive in numbers. Three men were
brought in within the following half-hour, two of them
drunk and the other sober but mournful. The mournful
one made up his bed next to mine. I asked him why he was
there, and he said he had been A.W.O.L. "Been over the
hill a month and a half," he said. "Then I give myself up.
They didn't even catch me. I just give myself up like I was
enlistin* again. So they put me in here." He seemed puzzled
and hurt at this mistreatment by the Army. "I wouldn't of

50

A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

come back if I knowed they'd put me in here," he said

I asked why he had left in the first place.

"Just got tired," he said. "Figgered I'd go home and see
my wife."

I asked him how old he was, and he said sixteen. I asked
how old his wife was.

"She's growin' up," he said. "Coin' on fifteen." He searched
in his pockets and brought out a picture of a thin, pretty
little girl standing beside some trees. "Took that at a picnic
only last week," he said. He replaced the picture in his
pocket and the puzzled look returned to his face. "I can't
understand this here Army," he said. "After I went and give
myself up like that."

Several prisoners had arrived while we were talking and
the room was now about half full. Most of the men seemed
morose, and while none of them looked particularly
ashamed, they were quieter than men together usually are.
They all made their beds as soon as they came in and most
of them went right off to sleep. The boy next to me fell
asleep before long and I dozed off, too. When next I woke
up someone was trying to steal the blanket off me. I opened
one eye and saw a soldier gently pulling at my blanket. I
pulled too, also gently, and the soldier dropped the blanket
and backed away a yard or so. "I was only kidding," he ex-
plained. I said a few appropriate words, then looked around
the room. It was almost filled now, with mattresses and men
scattered all over the place. Only a few mattresses were left
in the pile, and there were no blankets at all. Some of the

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

sleepers had two or three blankets over them, and I told the
soldier to take one of those. The air was not so good, and I
rose and stood by the bars to catch any breeze there might
be from outside. The man without a blanket succeeded in
lifting one from a sleeper and was soon asleep himself.

As I was standing by the door, a new guard came along
and peered through the bars. "Any trouble?" he asked. He
was older than the first guard. He said that the other man had
told him about me. I said that everything was fine.

"It's a quiet night," he said, resting his rifle against the
wall. "For Saturday night, it's very quiet. Sometimes we
have to hang out the S.R.O."

It was startling to hear Broadway jargon and I asked if he
had been an actor.

"Do I look like an actor?" he said scornfully. "I used to
manage a movie house in Cleveland, Ohio."

We exchanged biographies and commented briefly on the
disparity between Army and pre-Army jobs.

"Believe me," the guard said, "if I could only manage a
theater like I walk post at the guardhouse! The ushers bring
in the customer, you lock the door on him, and if he tries
to get out, you shoot him." He made a clucking sound with
his tongue. "The red-ink people would go out of business
if they had to wait for me."

I agreed that it would be a wonderful method to get
customers, and he smiled condescendingly.

"You know what's wrong with that method?" he said.

"What?" I asked.

52

A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

"It's Fascism," he said. "I don't care to do business in that
manner. That's why I'm in the Army," he added, putting one
hand through the bars and tapping me on the chest. "A man
who wouldn't look at a war picture in his own theater."

There was a sound outside and he picked up his rifle.
"That's the guard changing," he said. He started to go, then
turned back. "One year ago I was a leading pacifist in Cleve-
land, Ohio," he said. "Now look at me." He looked fine.

"Would you believe it?" he said proudly. "I shot 'expert'
three times with the light machine gun."

I went back to bed. I was awakened when the boy next
to me began to walk about in his sleep and announced loudly
that he was going home to Mississippi. The guard returned
and tried to wake the boy by shaking him and swearing at
him, but this did no good. Finally, he got a glass of water and
threw it in the boy's face. That convinced the boy that the
only place he was going was back to bed. This disturbance
awoke several of the other prisoners, among them Harlow,
who immediately began to sing. He was stopped by a large
prisoner who walked up to him and announced that he
would push his face through the back of his head if he didn't
shut up. I was just getting to sleep again when one of the
cooks from the mess hall came along and counted the prison-
ers. Shortly afterward an alarm clock rang down the corridor
and shortly after that a small army of M.P.'s marched by.
There was no use trying to sleep, so I put on my shoes and
got up. Other prisoners also got up, folding their blankets

53

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

and piling them up again. A few minutes later the guard
unlocked the door and some of the men who seemed to
know their way around went out to wash. I followed them.
After washing up, we were all told to go to the mess hall.
Sergeant Taylor was sitting alone at one table, and he asked
me to join him when I'd got my food.

"How'ditgo?"he asked.

I told him, and he nodded. "Quiet night," he said. "Quiet-
est Saturday night in a long time."

I asked him if they had sleepwalkers every Saturday night,
and he shook his head. "Sometimes we get 'em bangin' their
heads against the wall," he said, "but we don't hardly get
none of them sleepwalkers. Guess they figure there ain't
much room in there to walk around much."

I left Taylor laughing at his joke and went into the kitchen
to wait in line for breakfast. There was another line of men
waiting with cups for a peculiar-looking beverage which I
later learned was a special hangover remedy the cook sup-
plied on Sunday mornings. It is made from a secret recipe
that has been handed down by a long line of guardhouse
cooks. Breakfast consisted of grapefruit, cereal, griddle cakes,
bacon, milk, and cofTee, and it was very good. I carried my
tray back to Taylor's table and he told me that usually the
prisoners are marched in to meals and eat in units but that
Sunday was more or less informal and the men could wander
in as they liked. The mess hall began to fill up with prison-
ers who were eating quietly. The only noise was at a center
table, where two men were quarreling. When their voices

54

A NIGHT IN THE GUARDHOUSE

got too high Taylor rose and started toward them. He was
half-way to their table when one of the men leaned over and
hit the other in the face. In a moment they were both rolling
on the floor. Taylor and another M.P. got to them quickly
and separated them.

"He did it!" the man who had been hit said, pointing to
the other man.

"Well?" Taylor said to the accused man.

"Sure I did it," he said tensely. "I warned him before. I
can't stand dirty language at the table."

After Taylor had calmed the two men down and finished
his breakfast he walked me to the guardhouse door. On our
way we had to pass the door of the cooling-of? room, where
my companions of the past night were waiting to be booked.
They all looked at Taylor and myself with interest. "What
are they going to do?" Harlow called out. "Shoot you?" I
thanked Taylor at the door and went outside. As I arrived
at the gate a guard was explaining something to a prisoner
who was on his way out with a twelve-hour pass for good
behavior. "And don't forget," the guard was saying as the
man listened attentively, "this gate is locked at nine o'clock
and if you ain't back by then, you're just plain out of luck."

—May 1942.

55

V. INHALE! OUTHALE!

0,

NE OF the minor phenomena of the war effort is the
existence of actors within our Army. The assimilation of an
ordinary civilian into the armed forces is usually complete
within a few weeks, and the man's identity is lost in the mili-
tary mass. In the case of an actor, however, it occasionally
happens that within a few weeks the outfit to which he is
assigned begins to assume his characteristics. This interest-
ing situation has recently been extended to its logical extreme
at Camp Upton, where more than two hundred actors now
in uniform are stationed in one detachment. The purpose of
this roundup is to raise money for Army Emergency Relief;
the men constitute the cast of the new Irving Berlin soldier
show called This Is the Army, based on his famous Yip-Yip-
Yap han\ of the last war. The show is due to open in New
York on July fourth, and all proceeds from the run will go
into the Army fund. Meanwhile, rehearsals have been in
progress at Camp Upton.

The cast of the show, including myself, was drawn from
enlisted men in Army posts all over the country, but most of
the men are New Yorkers. Their length of service varies
from four or five days to more than a year. At Camp Upton
they have been living as an Army company in a disused tent
area, rehearsing in empty mess halls, and drilling. Their

56

INHALE! OUTHALE!

routine, as a matter of fact, is that of a regular field company,
with not only drill but reveille and even inspections. The
only difference is that company duty consists of rehearsing
instead of combat work. The administration of the company
is carried out by a non-theatrical detail of one company
officer and five noncommissioned officers. The officer is the
company commander; the duties of the noncoms are the
vocal duties of all non-coms, plus acting as involuntary
straight men to the various comedians in the cast, which
sometimes seems to be made up entirely of comedians.

The day at Camp Upton began at seven-thirty, when the
actors 'returned from breakfast to line up in the company
street for roll call. One day was usually like another. On this
particular day most of the men were dressed in fatigue
clothes and looked like soldiers; a few just looked uncom-
fortable. These last were the men who had been in the
Army only four or five days. The cast's sole deviation from
normal soldier dress was its shoes, which ranged from shiny
tap shoes to ballet slippers. The men's faces ranged in com-
plexion from the deep tan of a field soldier to the smart light
green of a recent night-club hoofer.

The men were lined up by platoons between the rows of
tents, answering to the names the first sergeant was reading
from a slip of paper. It was easy enough to tell that the first
sergeant was a Regular Army man, because every so often
he bellowed for quiet, although no one was talking. Several
of the men whose names he called had been prominent on

57

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

the stage or in the movies. They looked different in uniform
— younger and leaner and generally more efficient. In par-
ticular, there was one comedian whose routine used to de-
pend on his all-round personal inadequacy and who now,
without his baggy pants and ill-fitting hat, had the hard,
anonymous look of a soldier. The men stood at attention
while the roll was being called. The sergeant then announced
in a loud voice that all men rehearsing would report to the
mess halls and all men not rehearsing would fall out and
form a line by the orderly tent. He pointed to the tent and
shouted, "Fall out!" Three comics immediately fell flat on
their faces. The other men moved off to their assignments,
none of them paying any attention to the men who had
fallen, and after a while the comics picked themselves up
and marched of! after the rest, not looking at each other.

There were about twenty men in the line before the
orderly tent. The first sergeant turned them over to another
sergeant and retired into the orderly tent. The new sergeant
turned them over to a corporal who was unlucky enough
to be standing near by, and came over to talk to me. My job
with the show was vaguely that of enlisted press agent, and
I used this vagueness to escape from details such as this on
the pretext that I was working on a story. Today I was sup-
posed to get a story on how tough these men had it in com-
parison with non-theatrical soldiers. I had not been with the
show long enough to know everyone, so I thought I'd just
walk around and get acquainted. I asked the sergeant how
he liked being with a bunch of actors. "I wouldn't trade this

58

INHALE! OUTHALE!

job for anything in the Army," the sergeant said. "I been in
the Army four years and never laughed so much in my life."
He pointed to the men who had lined up for drill and were
now doing calisthenics. "Watch what goes on there," he said.
The men were working on a breathing exercise, which con-
sisted of touching the ground, if possible, with their hands,
reaching to the sky while inhaling, and then bringing their
hands to their sides while exhaling. No two men were doing
the exercise the same way. The comedians got very inter-
ested in the pebbles on the ground and studied them at
length whenever they bent down. The dancers did a time
step or a whirl after reaching into the air. As the singers
inhaled, they ran up and down the scale. The corporal, who
stood in front of the men and showed how the exercise
should be done, seemed preoccupied with his work and took
no notice of these variations. The men went through several
other exercises in the regulation manner, and then the cor-
poral asked if anyone felt capable of leading the exercises
himself. About half the men raised their hands. The corporal
selected a private in the first row.

"That's Oshins," the sergeant said to me. "He used to be
a big comedian. I seen him lots of times." I had also seen him
before, as half of a comedy team that used to perform in night
clubs and vaudeville. When Oshins stepped out in front the
men all cheered and he took several deep bows. Then he
turned to the corporal and said, "O.K., Corp, you go lie
down in your tent and come back in four hours." The
corporal looked puzzled. Oshins turned again to the men

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and called them to attention. No one moved. "Oh, come-
dians!" Oshins said. "You want I should call the captain?"
He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly. "Cap-
tain!" he yelled at the top of his voice.

"Hey!" the corporal said, startled.

The first sergeant put his head out of the orderly tent and
said, "Who's calling the captain?"

By that time the men were at attention and Oshins was
outlining an exercise to them in double-talk. Then he
ordered, "Inhale!" The men all inhaled. "Outhale!" Oshins
shouted. "Inhale! Outhale! Sidehale!"

"What the hell is that?" the corporal asked.

"That's a new breathing method," Oshins explained. "Field
Manual 36-6, with Kreplach"

"Oh," the corporal said.

Oshins continued with the breathing exercises for a while
and finished by dismissing the men with orders to report
back in three days, and it took the corporal about five minutes
to round up the men again. After that they settled down
to business, performing their exercises as soldiers and not
actors. They were then handed rifles and marched of! for
instruction in the Manual of Arms. The rifles seemed to
make them even more businesslike, though one man marched
off balancing his rifle on his chin. They marched well, the
actor's sense of rhythm helping their step, and the sergeant
looked after them proudly. "They're all right," he said. "They
kid around a lot, but they do all right when it comes to the
serious soldier stuff."

60

INHALE! OUTHALE!

I hung around the orderly tent for a while, then wandered
down to the rehearsals, which were being held near by
in a row of mess halls. Music was coming out of all the
halls. I went into the one that sounded noisiest. The interior
was bare except for a piano and some scattered benches.
The room was full of soldiers and in the middle of the floor
was a chorus line of eight men, looking disgusted. They
were being taught a dance routine by a corporal. A soldier
at the piano played a vamp, and they went into a song about
how they were ladies of the chorus. Then eight other men,
representing men of the chorus, joined them, and all sixteen
did a dance together. At the end, they were dripping sweat.
"I haven't worked this hard since maneuvers," one man
said.

"Ten-minute break!" the corporal called. Some of the men
flopped on the floor and some went outside, probably to
smoke. I waited until the corporal, who had started to show
one of the men how to do a dance step, had finished, and
then asked him how the soldiers were taking the transition
from Broadway to the Army and then back to Broadway.
"I'll tell you one thing," he said. "They're working their
heads of! for this show." The corporal, who said his name
was Barclift, added that he was co-directing the dances with
a Private Sidney, to whom I was introduced as he tapped
past, showing a step to one of the soldiers. I asked Barclift
how long he had been in the Army. "Sixteen months," he
said. He showed me a scar on his forearm. "I got that on a
night problem in the middle of Georgia," he said. Barclift

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had been drafted while dancing in "Lady in the Dark" and
spent a hazardous period in the infantry before being trans-
ferred North to assist in the Second Corps Area entertain-
ment program. He had recently been at West Point, where
he staged the dances for the academy's Hundredth Night
show. "They were nice guys," he said. "They all had a very
good stretch."

By this time the ten-minute break was over and the men
were returning to the floor. Private Sidney was clapping his
hands and calling, "Russian Winter, Russian Winter!" Bar-
clift explained to me that "Russian Winter" was the name of
one of the show's production numbers. I moved to the oppo-
site end of the room, where other men were waiting for their
cue. A card game was in progress in one corner, several men
were reading Variety, and a hot argument was going on in
another corner.

"What do you mean the thirty-seven-millimeter is obso-
lete?" a soldier was saying indignantly.

"You heard me," a man wearing tap shoes said. "They got
too much armor on tanks now."

"Listen to him," the first man said, addressing a number
of onlookers. "He's been playing too many benefits. I happen
to know that the thirty-seven-millimeter is hot stuff against
tanks."

"And what is your source of information?" the man in the
tap shoes asked. "You got relatives who make it?"

"My source of information is yours truly," the first soldier

62

, INHALE! OUTHALE!

said proudly. "I pulled one of those damned things all over
the Carolina maneuvers. If I don't know what that thing can
do, nobody knows," he said, and turned away. One of the
onlookers leaned toward me. "Tell me, please," he said. "I've
been in the Army two weeks now. What the hell is a thirty-
seven-millimeter ? "

The rehearsal was well under way by this time, with what
presumably was the "Russian Winter" number going on all
over the floor. I waved good-by to Corporal Barclift and
Private Sidney, who were busy showing a soldier how to
do several turns while three feet or! the floor, and walked
across the road to another hall. There I found a half-dozen
soldiers sitting in a semicircle, reading lines. A staff sergeant
was directing them. He was a small, round soldier, with a
habit of suddenly rolling his head to one side and staring at
the ceiling. When I heard his voice I recognized him as Ezra
Stone, the radio actor. The men were apparently rehearsing
a minstrel number and Stone, besides directing, was acting
as one of the end men. The gags were mostly about the
Army. At the other end of the room three soldiers were re-
hearsing a tap routine by themselves. I watched them for a
while, quite impressed, since they were the only soldiers I
had ever seen who were able to circumvent the gravity pull
of G.I. shoes. When the minstrels finally stopped for a rest,
Sergeant Stone also walked over to watch the dancers, and I
asked him if it were true that the cast was going to drill
in an armory when it got to New York.

"Certainly," Stone said.

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"That's on days when we don't have matinees," one of
the dancers said.

"That's on every day," Stone said.

"The Army can't do that to us on days we have two
shows," the other man said. "Equity won't let them."

After lunch I attached myself to the men on their way to
rehearsal and followed them to the rehearsal-hall area. A
group of them were talking about the amount of money they
were to receive in New York for rations and quarters, since
there they would have to find their own places to eat and
sleep.

"Two dollars and thirty-five cents a day," one of the men
kept saying. "How can I eat in Lindy's on two dollars and
thirty-five cents?"

"Don't forget ten per cent for your agent," another man
said.

"The hell with him," the first man said. "He's in the
Navy."

"That isn't the worst of it," a third man said. "I hear if
the show doesn't do so well, we'll have to take a cut."

"Hah!" the first man said. "I haven't even been paid for
the month of May yet. But do I squawk? I'm a patriotic
American." He shook his head sadly. "The government
doesn't pay what they owe me and I don't say a word. But
if I shouldn't pay what I owe them, they send around
the F.B.I." He shook his head again. "Is that fair?" he said.
"I ask you."

64

INHALE! OUTHALE!

Once more I watched "Russian Winter." The afternoon
went about like the morning, and at four-thirty Corporal
Barclift blew a whistle and announced that rehearsal was
over. The men wearily straggled out of the hall and back
to their tents. I walked back with Barclift and a soldier
named Maurice Kelly, who was also a dancer. Kelly had
been transferred to the show from Fort Dix and was await-
ing an appointment tp Officer Candidate School.

"I want to go to cavalry school," he said. "I had infantry
training in South Carolina and that was enough for me."

I had dinner in the mess hall with the men after waiting
in line and being asked to hold the deck for what was ap-
parently a running card game. The food was regular Army
food. After dinner I walked down to our tents. The night
was warm and most of the men were standing in the com-
pany street. At one end four of the musicians had formed
an impromptu string quartet and were giving a concert.
At the other three acrobats were practicing some tricks. A
soldier explained to me that they had joined the Army to-
gether so that they wouldn't have to break up the act.

At eight o'clock, all the men assembled in one of the re-
hearsal halls and sat on the floor in the middle of the room.
Standing in front of them were Sergeant Stone and a small,
thin, worried-looking man in civilian clothes, whom I recog-
nized as Irving Berlin. As soon as the men had quieted,
Berlin explained that this night they would merely run
through the songs and not the production numbers. A

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technical sergeant, who was apparently the stage manager,
gave out copies of the lyrics to anyone who didn't know
them. The numbers were led by a corporal, who conducted
with precise movements of his hands and constant exhorta-
tions to keep the words crisp. Just about everyone in the room
sang, including Berlin. At the end of each number Berlin
conferred with Stone and the conductor and then told the
chorus how the singing could be improved. At one point a
member of the chorus stepped forward to sing a solo. He
was dressed in fatigues and looked as though he had just
come from K.P. duty. He sang the number in a high, operatic
tenor, complete with gestures, and the effect was somewhat
as if La Boheme were sung with the cast in underwear. The
time passed very rapidly and I was surprised, when Sergeant
Stone called a halt, to see that it was ten o'clock. I asked one
of the soldiers if every day was as long as this. "This is noth-
ing," he said. "Some of the numbers have conferences now
until two in the morning."

I returned to the tents with a group of men that included
Private Oshins. They were all talking about what they would
do when the show was over and they were returned to their
respective outfits. Everyone admired the plan Oshins had.
"When this show is over," he said, "I am going to get me a
thirty-day furlough. With options."

— June 1942.

66

VI. NIGHT WATCH

I HE

I HE' MERCHANT crew of the freighter, Censored, on
which I have been a guest of the United States Army for
the past two months, has a saying that anyone who would
go to sea for fun would go to hell for pleasure. The crew
always repeats this adage after submarine alarms, and it is
usually echoed by the Navy gun crew, when it gets time, and
by the ship's ten passengers, when they have crawled out
from under their beds. This does not mean that anyone
aboard the Censored feels he is taking this trip for fun; it is
just that the truism has a certain grisly significance when
you are traveling a hostile ocean and carrying a cargo of
high explosives.

Like many other freighters running between Allied ports,
the Censored belongs to one of the dispossessed United Na-
tions and only narrowly missed becoming part of the German
merchant marine. She is a young ship, capable of outrunning
most submarines. The members of her crew who were aboard
in peacetime say that the Censored was especially handsome
for a freighter, with bright coloring and clean, strong lines.
At the moment, all the beauty of the ship is in her function.
The paint job has been covered by the anonymous gray

67

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best suited for contemporary ocean travel; the sleek lines are
broken by such necessities as anti-aircraft guns; the decks
are jammed with ugly packing cases. Even the passenger
cabins have been made into small-scale dormitories. Most of
this living space is taken up by the Navy crew, which is re-
garded, along with the war materials in the hold, as vital
cargo. The rest of the space is occupied by a highly expend-
able excess cargo, consisting of eight brand-new second lieu-
tenants and two slightly worn sergeants, en route to foreign
service.

As one of the noncommissioned passengers, my only as-
signed duty was to keep out of the way of the crew.
However, the captain soon suggested that the passengers
stand watch along with the Navy men, and we went to work.
Our post was on a spacious deck that commanded an excel-
lent view of the bow and what looked like all the water in
the world. One of the gun crew shared this post with us and a
ship's officer patrolled the bridge below. We were all equipped
with life-jackets, binoculars, and phone sets with which we
could communicate with other Navy men standing watch. It
was generally frowned upon by the naval ensign in charge
of the gun crew to use the phones for anything except busi-
ness; if we spotted something we were to check it over the
phones with the other lookouts or else convey the informa-
tion in a loud voice to the officer on the bridge. In case of an
actual engagement, we all had specific duties at the guns.

We stood our watches at two-hour intervals, usually dur-
ing the day. We were used at night only in extremely dan-

68

NIGHT WATCH

gerous waters. One night I happened to pull the watch from
4 A.M to 6 A.M. At those times we were usually awakened
fifteen minutes early by one of the sailors, but the day before
we had received reports of two submarines operating around
us, and I awoke all by myself at a quarter to three. We were
sleeping in our clothes; so all I had to do was put on my shoes.
Then I took my life-jacket and went out on deck.

It was very dark outside; there was a moon, but it was be-
hind some clouds. I stood there for a while, watching the
phosphorescence of the water, and then someone came up
and stood beside me. It was the Navy coxswain, a short,
black-haired boy from Missouri. He said he had just checked
the forward watch and was going to check the after watch,
and would I like to come along. I said I would. "Can't tell
what those boys will do," the coxswain said, leading the way
to the stern. "Some of them it's their first trip out, and they
might of fell overboard."

We picked our way through the cargo along the deck. The
coxswain first inspected the big gun. Then we walked over
to the starboard side, where a sailor was looking out over the
water. He did not notice either the coxswain or me. We
walked up behind him and the coxswain said, "Hey!" The
sailor spun around, pulling at his earphones. "Just wanted
to see if you were asleep," the coxswain said mildly.

"Gawd," the sailor said, "I thought you was the German
Navy."

"This is his first trip," the coxswain said to me. "Five
months ago he was the Rowboat King of Cape Hatteras."

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

"Aw," the sailor said.

"Bet you wish you were back there now," the coxswain
said.

"You ain't tellin' no tall tales," the sailor said.

The coxswain made sure that the sailor's phones were in
order, and then we walked across to the port watch. The
sailor there had seen us coming and was prepared for the
coxswain's special greeting. "He's a great kidder," he said to
me, indicating the coxswain. "Last time he come up on me
I like to fell off the ship."

"That wouldn't be the first time," the coxswain said.

I asked him what he meant and he explained that this
sailor had fallen off the last ship he had been on. The sailor
nodded modestly. "Right in the middle of a god-damn con-
voy," he said.

"Well, you better not fall off this ship," the coxswain said.
"They'll just throw you a life-belt and keep right on going."

I asked the sailor how he happened to fall off, and he said
he was sitting on the rail and must have dozed. "I was cer-
tainly surprised," he said. He was an Italian boy from New
Jersey, and this was his second trip. "The first trip was
nicer," he said. "We had nurses on board."

Just then the moon broke through, shone for a moment,
and then was blotted out again. "God-damn moon," the
sailor said.

"That's all we need with two subs around," the coxswain
said. "That's a regular searchlight."

We watched the sky now as well as the water. The clouds

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NIGHT WATCH

were thinning out, and the moon seemed to have a good
chance of breaking through. "It's a full moon," the sailor
from Jersey said. "Just right for loving." There was a sound
from his earphones and he listened intently.

"Who's that?" the coxswain asked.

"It's Allen on the number three," the sailor said.

The coxswain moved closer, trying to hear what was said.
"Does he see anything?" he asked. There was a moment in
which none of us moved, and then the sailor relaxed. "He
says you should send him up a woman," he said.

We stayed with the sailor for a while, then the coxswain
suggested going to the sailors' recreation room for a smoke.
It was forbidden to smoke on certain parts of the deck be-
cause of the cargo we carried, and naturally forbidden to
smoke anywhere outside at night. I followed the coxswain
back through the dark, the ship silent and heavy around us.
Twice I bumped my knee against life-rafts; the Censored had
these scattered all over the decks, ready to float loose if the
ship went down. We went through a passageway, climbed a
ladder and came out on one of the shelter-decks. The recrea-
tion room was part of this deck that had been enclosed to
make a bona-fide room. It was equipped with a long table,
benches, a bookcase with about a hundred books in it, and
lockers for the gun crew. On one wall were diagrams of
friendly and hostile aircraft. A pair of boxing gloves lay on
one of the benches, and there was an old phonograph on the
table. We sat on one of the benches, and the coxswain
sighed loudly. "These damned submarines," he said. "I ain't

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had no sleep since we left port." I asked him how many
trips he had made, and he said that this was his third.
Before that he had been in the fleet, stationed on a destroyer.
His face lit up when he talked of the destroyer. "You got
protection on one of those things," he said. He did not mind
being in the Armed Guard, which is the branch of the Navy
that supplies gun crews to non-Navy ships, but he preferred
the fleet. He explained that the actual work was easier on
a merchant ship; the only thing he didn't like was the way
the Armed Guard had received its nickname. Other sailors
call it the Suicide Squad. "It's too much like being on a clay
pigeon," the coxswain said. "You meet up with a sub one
night and maybe you're on a dead pigeon."

I asked the coxswain if he had seen any action, and he said
he had seen a little. As he did not seem disposed to talk about
it, I didn't press him. We sat there talking about the Army
and the Navy, and he mentioned that the last trip he had
made was on a troop transport. I asked him how he liked the
Army. "Those crazy bastards," he said amiably. He smoked
for a while without saying anything. Then he said, "We sunk
a sub one night, and they slept all the way through it." He
shook his head. "You know about that sub — it surfaced right
in the middle of the convoy and nobody could figure out why.
Can you imagine coming up smack in the middle of a con-
voy? The tin cans just blasted the tail off him. They blew
that sub right out of the water." He shook his head again.
"I can't understand why a sub would do a thing like that. It
just doesn't make sense."

72

NIGHT WATCH

We talked for a while longer, until it was time for me to
go on watch. The coxswain said he was going to turn in, but
didn't seem too optimistic about actually sleeping. I left him
yawning and went out on deck. After a few minutes to get
used to the dark I went up the ladder to the bridge and then
up on top of the wheelhouse. The lieutenant I was to relieve
was standing on the port side, talking to the ship's officer on
watch. The Navy lookout was on the starboard side. I asked
the lieutenant if anything were stirring, and he shook his
head. "Not a thing," he said, a little regretfully. He took oft"
his earphones and binoculars and handed them to me. Then
he straightened the bars on his jacket, said good-night and
went off below. He was a very new lieutenant who had been
commissioned straight from civilian life.

I put on the phones and slung the binoculars over my neck.
"I hope that moon stays in," the ship's officer said. He was
one of the junior officers, a heavy, blond young man who was
always playing with the ship's cat. "We came into Malta on a
night like this," he said. This was the first I had known of the
Censored having gone to Malta and I asked him about it.
"Oh, yes," he said. "This ship has been bombed plenty." He
spoke with a heavy accent and pronounced both b's in bomb.
I asked if the Censored had ever been hit. "We got one burst
in the stern on the Malta trip," he said, "but the only damage
was to destroy the cots that the gun crew had set up for
sleeping on the deck." I asked if the hit had been from a bomb
and he laughed. "Oh, no," he said. "It was from one of our
own destroyers, trying to hit a torpedo plane." He ex-

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plained that as torpedo planes come in very low, there is
much crossfire from the defending ships. "But mostly we
were attacked by high-level bombers, and they did not do
much damage." He didn't say anything for a moment, and
then he said, "They do most of their damage on the women."
He stayed up for a few minutes more, then went down to
his post on the bridge. When he had gone, the sailor on watch
came over. "You know about that guy," he said. "He's got his
wife in Java and ain't heard from her since the war started."
He clucked his tongue sympathetically. "Lots of this crew
got their families in these here occupied territories," he said.
This sailor was another Italian boy, with a long nose and eye-
brows that met in a mess of black hair. On the back of his
life-jacket he had painted "Tony from Brooklyn." When he
heard that I was from Brooklyn, he smacked his hands to-
gether. "Man," he said, "that's God's country!" We walked
up and down, while Tony explained why the Dodgers had
fallen apart last season. Every so often, instead of just walk-
ing, he would hop around and start shadow-boxing, although
he would always stop when he got to the side and give the
water a good look. I asked him if he had ever done any
fighting. "That's my god-damn life," he said simply. He
bobbed and weaved for my benefit and jabbed the air with a
couple of fast lefts. "I always got my mitts up," he said. "It's
my habit. Every time someone comes near me I got my mitts
up." He hooked the air with the left and crossed the right. I
calmed him down enough to discover that he had been start-
ing a professional boxing career when war broke out, and

74

NIGHT WATCH

had already had one fight in Hartford, Conn. "It was at one
of those places like Coney Island," Tony said. "One of them
expeditions." I asked him how he made out. "I lost on a
technical," he said. "The other guy was too hep for me."
He then proceeded to tell me about the fight in detail. He
was half-way through the second round when one of the
voices over the phone said, "Tony." Tony stopped bobbing
and weaving. The voice said, "I see a light oft* the port
beam."

Tony straightened up quickly and we both walked over to
the port side. I couldn't see a thing. Tony said over the
phone, "You're nuts."

"The hell I am," said the voice. "I seen a light."
"That Allen is always seeing things," Tony said to me.
We watched the horizon; there was no light so far as I
could see, and then suddenly there was a pin-prick of light
that shone for a second and went out. "Oh, man," Tony said.
He leaned over the side and called down to the ship's officer.
A moment later the officer was up with us, carrying a long
spyglass. He looked through the glass at the spot we indi-
cated, and the light came on again while he was looking. It
must have been just over the horizon, and it shone for only
a second. The officer put down his glass and, without saying a
word, went helow. "He's getting the captain," Tony said.
"And I am getting the ensign." He went over to the alarm
buzzers, which were set near one of the guns. There were
buzzers to give the general alarm, to call the gun crew from
its quarters, and to call the ensign from his quarters. Tony

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buzzed the ensign, sending the three dots that were code for
the letter S. This was the signal for submarine or surface
craft; for planes the signal was a dot and a dash for the
letter A.

By this time -everyone on watch had seen the light. "I seen
it first," Allen was saying over the phones. "The rest of you
jerks is blind." The light was still visible, but difl not seem to
be getting any brighter. It might have been a ship on the
horizon, but no ship would be showing a light if it could help
it; and we weren't near any land. "Maybe it's a lighthouse,"
someone said over the phones.

"Maybe it's the Brooklyn Paramount," Tony said.

"I^seen it first," Allen was saying. "You jerks wouldn't see
anything unless it hit you."

I watched the light flicker on and of! and then watched
what was happening on the bridge. The captain had come
up : he was a huge man with an enormous belly and a shaved
head, and his feet were always in patent leather pumps. He
was talking to the junior officer. "We're changing course,"
Tony said. I looked back and saw our wake gleaming in the
dark. We were making a half circle, moving away from
the light. The ensign was on the bridge now — a tall, slender,
soft-spoken Virginian who looked a little like Robert Mont-
gomery. He had formerly been the head of the research de-
partment of a college library. He had his own binoculars and
was looking at the light through them. Finally he put them
down and came up the ladder to where we were standing.
He said something to Tony in a low voice, and Tony turned

NIGHT WATCH

and went below. "We can't seem to make out what the light
is," the ensign said to me. "We're changing course to see if
it will follow us. We should lose it in a little while." He did
not seem particularly worried, but neither was he very cheer-
ful. We stood there, watching the light. "It might be a
friendly ship with a porthole open," the ensign said. There
didn't seem to be much to say if it weren't a friendly ship.
Tony came up the ladder, followed by the coxswain. "When
I get into port I'm going to sleep for three days," the cox-
swain said.

"I don't think it's enough to justify gun stations," the
ensign said, "but we'll stand double watches for a while."
The coxswain nodded and went off. The rest of us turned
back to the light, but it had disappeared. "Must be over the
horizon," the ensign said. The moon had apparently given
up any idea of coming out, but the sky was getting lighter.
Up on the bow I could see the new men climbing into the pill
boxes to stand the extra watch. "I guess I'll check the guns,"
the ensign said, half to himself. He nodded rather absently
and went below. The light was still not visible, and I could
not make up my mind whether I felt better or worse because
of it. So long as it shone we could see what was coming after
us. I remembered the coxswain's words about why he pre-
ferred a destroyer. "I would feel a lot better if we was carry-
ing a load of wood," Tony said.

The ship was turning again, and the light fell farther
astern. The ensign was up on the bow, talking to the cox-
swain. The captain had been joined on the bridge by the

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chief officer — a small, dour-looking man — and they were
drinking cofTee oiit of large glasses. The junior officer was
with them, looking through the spyglass. It was much
lighter now; back of us the horizon was turning pink. The
wind had picked up, though, and the ship was digging into
the sea. Tony had his eyes on the water, but he was shifting
his feet back and forth against the roll of the ship. "Improves
the footwork," he said. "I think everyone should know how
to defense yourself."

The light was definitely gone by now. I looked through
my binoculars and couldn't see anything, and then I looked
again and saw something, and someone said over the phones,
"It's a ship." It was a ship, all right. I could see the top of
the mast over the horizon. They had already seen it on the
bridge; the captain was looking through the spyglass him-
self. The ship was off the port quarter, where the light would
have been. It was not far enough over the horizon to tell
anything about it. The ensign was on. the bridge, signaling
Tony with his hand. Tony nodded, went over to the alarm
buzzer, and rang for the crew. "Gun stations," he said to
me. In a moment I could see sailors cutting across the deck
cargo and climbing up the ladders to the pill boxes. The
coxswain was already up on the forward gun, wheeling it
around to face the other ship. All the sailors were wearing
life-jackets, and a few were wearing helmets. They looked
very businesslike and efficient. The other ship was off the
port beam; we had changed course again. I could see some
of the superstructure through my glasses. "It looks like a

NIGHT WATCH

Liberty," Tony said. "It better be a Liberty," said a voice
over the phones.

Everyone was watching the ship. It was coming slowly
over the horizon, barely moving. The gun crew was at full
stations now, the guns still elevated in their rest positions,
but the covers off and the ready boxes open. On the bridge
the captain and the ensign were looking through their glasses
at the ship. The ensign was wearing a set of phones, ready to
transmit any orders to the guns. Everyone who had binocu-
lars was watching through them. Then the ensign put down
his glasses, and after a moment the captain put his down.
They smiled at each other. "It must be a Liberty," Tony said.

After a while the ensign came up to our post. "It's a Lib-
erty ship," he said. "You can tell from the silhouette." I
asked him if that was what we had seen during the night,
"I guess it was," he said. "Someone must have left a port>
hole open. It's lucky we weren't a submarine."

I stayed on watcji for another half hour, watching the Lib-
erty ship through my glasses. It was soon visible without the
glasses, moving very slowly away from us. At six o'clock, one
of the lieutenants came up to relieve me. He was very an-
noyed when he discovered that he had missed some excite-
ment. It was too early for breakfast, so I went down to the
galley and had a cup of coffee. Then I went on deck. The
sailors had their hammocks strung across part of one of the
decks, and I lay down in a hammock and tried to sleep. A
Navy poker game had already started in one corner and in
another corner sat a very thin sailor dressed in faded blue

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KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

denims. He was playing a guitar and singing in a high,
mountain tenor. The other men called him Slim ; on the back
of his life-jacket was painted "Columbus, Georgia." Slim
was wearing a pair of dark glasses against the sun, and some-
one had pinned a sign on him saying, "Blind — He cannot see
because his eyes are closed." His cap was face up beside him,
and every time one of the poker players took a big pot he
would come over and drop a coin in the hat and Slim would
say, "Bless you, brother, bless you." He was singing a song
which I knew as "When the Saints Go Marching In," but
he had changed the words somewhat and was singing:

When the Yanks go marching in,

Lord, I want to be m that number
When the Yanks go marching in.

Allen, the sailor who had first seen the light, came off
watch and flopped into the hammock next to me. He was a
round-faced boy who could not have been more than
eighteen, and he spoke with a thick Southern drawl. "Boy,"
he said, "they don't have nothin' like that in High Point,
North Carolina.'* The Liberty ship was now almost out of
sight. Slim was singing a slow, sad song about his old
Southern home by the sea, and Allen was lying back in his
hammock with his eyes closed, beating time with his foot.
"High Point, North Carolina," Allen was saying. "Good
old High Point, North Carolina." Then I fell asleep.

— March 1943.

VII. THE TAKING OF FICARRA

I,

'HE TOWN of Ficarra, in Sicily, rests on top of a moun
tain, some eight miles from the north coast and about half-
way between Palermo and Messina. It is a small and ancient
town, so small that it doesn't appear in the atlases, but it was
militarily important because of its position. The American
Army, moving toward Messina, had to take Ficarra before it
could move on along the coast road. However, before doing
anything conclusive about Ficarra, such as sending in foot
troops, it was necessary to know what was in the town. Air
reconnaissance had reported nothing at all, but a division
patrol that had explored the neighborhood had reported
seeing what looked like a couple of Germans hanging
around the outskirts. The definitive mission of exploration
was assigned to a regimental intelligence detachment to
which I belonged. This detachment consisted of two squads
and a lieutenant to lead them, a total of seventeen men, in-
cluding myself, each of whom carried either a rifle or a
tommy gun. The purpose of the mission was simply to dis-
cover what was in the town ; we were not to pick any fights.

We set out from regimental headquarters in four jeeps at
1400 hours, which is a civilian two o'clock in the afternoon»

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I rode in the forward jeep, together with the lieutenant and
his driver. The lieutenant was a young, blond Texan named
Riley. He was a salesman before the war, but intended to
return to the University of Texas, which he had left before
graduating, and take up painting. He was only a second
lieutenant, although the kind of job he had called for a first
lieutenant, but that didn't bother him much. He had been
recommended for the D. S. C. because of bravery displayed
on the push up to Palermo, and even that didn't bother him.
All Riley wanted to do was finish the war and go back to
the University of Texas. His driver was a corporal named
Johns, a Mormon from California who wore a fringe of
beard around his face and drove as if he were a midget-auto
racer on a dirt track. Johns had been recommended for the
Silver Star, also because of bravery in the Palermo push, but
that was of less interest to him than the news he had recently
received that a ranch he had had his eye on for three years
had at last been offered for sale.

The road to Ficarra led up into the mountains that began
about half a mile from headquarters. It was a dirt road and
it climbed in hairpin turns all the way. A battle on the pre-
ceding day had been fought about half-way up the road.
The grass all along the sides was burned in little patches
where shells had landed. Once we passed a German tank that
had been knocked out. It had been set on fire and was all
black now, the cross on it barely visible, and lying beside it
in a ditch was a corpse covered by a blanket. Farther on we
passed an abandoned Italian truck that had been knocked

82

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

over on its back. The road was terribly quiet. There were no
soldiers anywhere and no sign of activity. There was only
the hot, midday stillness and the Mediterranean stretching
out behind us, flat and glassy.

After we had gone about six miles up the road, Riley mo-
tioned Johns to pull over to one side, against a cliff. As the
other jeeps came up, he motioned them to do the same. Then
Riley called for everyone except the drivers to start up the
road on foot. The men piled out of the jeeps and followed
him, slinging their guns over their shoulders. I followed too.
When Riley got up the road a little way, he turned ofT into
a grove of lemon trees. There he unslung his rifle and sat
down under one of the trees, took a map out of his pocket,
and began to study it. The rest of the men came up and
either leaned against the trees or sat down around Riley.
None of them said anything. They had gone through other
missions like this one before and were waiting now without
worry, certain of their ability. They thought only up to the
minute at a time like this. They waited quietly, nerves buried
under their professionalism, the thin, always present edge of
their impatience now hardly noticeable. They looked at
Riley or back at the sea; one of them started to pick a lemon
off a tree, then stopped. The Germans have a habit of booby-
trapping fruit trees.

After a while Riley put the map back in his pocket, took
off his helmet, and scratched his head. He had thin, white
hair that lay flat on his head. "There's no sense in going
straight up the road," he said. "We'll split intovtwo squad

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columns and move up the mountain, then flank the town
from below." He paused and looked out over the mountains.
"Probably there's nothing there," he said. No one questioned
him. He sighed and stood up. "Billerbeck," he said.

"Yes, sir," a sergeant said. Billerbeck was a good-looking
farm boy from Illinois.

"You take your squad along the road and I'll lead che other
one farther down," Riley said.

"Yes, sir" Billerbeck said.

Riley put on his helmet and slung his rifle over his
shoulder again. "Let's go," he said.

Riley led the squad I was in, which was headed by a
Sergeant Sheehan, to a path that wound its way up the
mountain more or less parallel to the road and about thirty
yards below. We took this path while Billerbeck and his
men walked along the road above us. Riley was in the lead,
followed by Sergeant Sheehan, a tall, thin Irishman from
New Haven who used to sell magazine subscriptions. I came
behind Sheehan. Each man walked twenty feet or so behind
the one ahead of him. Nothing had been said about land
mines, but we all tried to walk in the footsteps of the men
before us. The most popular anti-personnel mine the Ger-
mans use is called the S mine. This makes a little pop when
you step on it and shoots a container five feet into the air,
where it explodes with terrific force and scatters several hun-
dred steel balls. We walked along slowly, listening all the
time.

THE TAKING OF FJCARRA

In twenty minutes we were almost at the top of our
mountain and we cut back to the road again. There Riley
dropped to his knees and wriggled the rest of the way up,
motioning back to the rest of us to stop where we were.
Then he took out his field glasses and peered over the crest.
The rest of us sat down. Riley motioned to Sheehan and me
to join him, and we crept up to where he was. He handed
the glasses to Sheehan and said, "Take a look." We could
see the edge of the town from where we lay. It was up the
road about half a mile, huddled on the top of the mountain.
The road dipped into a hollow ahead of us and then rose to
the town. All we could see without the glasses were a few
buildings and the road curving into town. There was no
sign of life. Sheehan peered a moment, then said, "You
mean those two people in the shadow?"

Riley nodded, took the glasses from Sheehan, and gave
them to me. He said, "Right under that red barn closest
to us." I looked and saw two men standing next to the barn.
They seemed to be talking. I couldn't tell whether or not
they wore uniforms. "I think they're civilians," Riley said.
I looked again through the glasses and saw the two men
come out of the shadow and start to walk down the road
toward us. I returned the glasses to Riley and he watched
the two men until they disappeared into the hollow. Then
he wriggled back to where he could stand up without being
seen from above. "Caruso," he called. One of the men down
the slope said, "Here I am." Riley waved for him to come
up. "A job for you," he said.

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"Yes, sir," Caruso said. He was a small and very dark
Italian with a big nose.

"There are two civilians coming down the road," Riley
said. "I want you to ask them what plays in the town."

"Sure," Caruso said.

"They should be here in a minute," Riley said. He went
back up the slope and looked over the crest. "They're coming
now," he said. He turned around and waved for the other
men to come up to the ridge. They moved up carefully and
Riley dispersed them with hand signals until they were
spread out along the edge of the road and had it covered with
their guns. Then he concealed himself.

I looked over the crest and saw the two men coming along
the road. They were civilians, all right, and Italians. They
were talking and gesturing with their hands. When they
were thirty yards from us, Caruso stepped out into the road.
The men stopped short. They looked around, and two of
our men stepped out on the road behind them. The Italians
seemed very frightened. They were short, middle-aged men,
and their hands continued to flutter after they had stopped
talking. Caruso said something in Italian. The men looked
around them a'gain and the taller of them said, "Americano ?"
Caruso nodded. "Ha!" the Italian said, and then he and his
companion smiled broadly, moved up to shake hands with
Caruso, and began to talk very rapidly. Caruso answered
with equal rapidity and soon they were having a great
conversation, the taller Italian talking in long stretches,
Caruso interrupting every now and then with what sounded

86

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

like questions. Caruso finally turned back to Riley. "He says
the people are waiting for us in the village," Caruso said.
"They have wine ready for us."

"The hell with the wine," Riley said. "Are there any Ger-
mans?"

"He says there are some Germans waiting to give them-
selves up at the edge of town," said Caruso.

Riley walked out on the road and looked at the two
Italians. "You think they're telling the truth?" he asked
Caruso.

"I think so," Caruso said.

"How many Germans are there?" Riley asked.

"He doesn't know how many," Caruso said. "He says there
are more Germans in the town, but some .of them are in a
building at the edge of town and want to give themselves
up. He says most of them pulled out this morning. They were
told we would cut their throats if we caught them." Riley
didn't say anything. The. taller Italian spoke again to Caruso.
"He says he'll show us where the Germans are hiding,"
Caruso said.

Riley didn't say anything. He took out his glasses again
and swept the town with them. Then he said, "All right." He
put away his glasses and turned to the Italians. "God help
you if this isn't on the level," he said. He turned to Caruso
and said, "You go with them along the road to town. We'll
cover you from the sides."

"You bet," Caruso said. He spoke to the Italians, motion-
ing toward the town, and they nodded.

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

"They go first," Riley said.

"Sure," Caruso said. He started up the road, the rifle now
o£f his shoulder and in his hands, the two Italians v/alking
in front of him.

"Take it easy," Riley called after him.

We got off the road again, reassembled in formation some
yards below it, and started ahead. We stayed closer to the
road than before. Caruso was moving slowly, but on the
mountainside we had to cover twice as much ground to travel
the same distance, and it was hard going. When we got
within two hundred yards of the town, Riley called to
Caruso to stop. He called to Billerbeck, too, and told him to
take his squad, cross the road, and enter the town from the
upper side. Billerbeck and his squad crossed over and Riley
led our squad up onto the road, where we strung out on
both sides about twenty paces apart. We waited there until
Billerbeck and his men disappeared around the edge of town ;
they went along carefully, taking advantage of the conceal-
ment offered by a large clump of trees. Then Riley told
Caruso to move forward.

We walked even more slowly now. It was very quiet and
hot, and our woolen shirts were black with sweat. The silence
was oppressive; it had a heavy, malignant quality. We
dipped into the hollow of the road and the town disappeared
from sight. When we came up the hill on the other side, the
red barn was immediately ahead. The two Italians stopped.
They said something to Caruso and pointed into the town.

88

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

"They say it's the third house," Caruso said. The road went
around a bend into town and we could not see past the barn.
The Italians spoke again to Caruso, who said to Riley, "They
tell me the Germans are just waiting for us to come."

"I'll bet they are," Riley said. He motioned back for us to
separate a little more, then said, "Let's go," and we moved
up the road again.

The bend in the road was not sharp, and the third house
came into view gradually. Riley led the way, with Sheehan
on the opposite side of the road a little behind him. I was
behind Sheehan. Opposite me was a young private named
Taylor. Caruso had dropped back to the end of our line with
the Italians, who were beginning to look frightened again.
Suddenly Riley stopped. He dropped to one knee and
brought up his rifle. I couldn't see why for a moment. Then
I saw a machine gun parked by the third house, pointing
down the road at us. That was the first thing I saw, and then
I saw a man coming out of the cellar of the house. He was
wearing a German uniform and he held his hands high in
the air. I got down on one knee and so did Sheehan and
Taylor, and we all covered the German. Riley put down his
gun and shouted, "Come on! Come on!," his voice harsh and
commanding. The German walked out onto the road. Three
other Germans followed him, all with their hands up. They
stood uncertainly in the road and Riley shouted, "Come
over here!" He motioned to them and they came down the
road. Riley said, "Take them, Sheehan," his eyes still on the
house and the road beyond. The Germans came up to us

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

and Sheehan moved to meet them. Taylor slipped across
the road to take Sheehan's place and I stood up to cover the
prisoners. They were three privates and a sergeant. The pri-
vates were maybe thirty-seven or thirty-eight, and the ser-
geant looked about twenty-five. They were all trying very
hard to smile, but none of them could quite make it. Sheehan
and I walked backward as they came on, until we were
around the bend again, and then we stopped. "Send them
back," Riley called to Sheehan. "Send a man back with them
to the jeeps." Sheehan called down to one of our men to
take the prisoners. The Germans had been looking from one
of us to the other, waking to see what we would do with
them. When a soldier came up to take them back, he raised
his tommy gun to cover them, and one of the Germans
said, "Nicht, nicht."

"We're not going to shoot you," Sheehan said.

"Nicht" the German said. He was one of the older men
and very much afraid. He spoke in a low, pleading voice,
holding out his hands to us.

"For God's sake," Sheehan said. "Nicht"

The German understood and tried to smile, but nothing
came out. Sheehan motioned them down the road and they
shuffled off, followed by the soldier with the tommy gun.

Sheehan and I rounded the bend again. Riley was still on
one knee, watching the house. He stood up when we took
our places. "O.K.?" he asked Sheehan. "O.K.," Sheehan said.
Riley looked back to see that the rest of the men were there
and then led the way slowly forward, staying close to one

90

THE TAKING OF F I C A R R A

side of the road. He didn't stop when we came to the third
house. The machine gun was there and so were two rifles,
but we didn't touch them. After the third house there was a
gap of perhaps fifty yards and then the town really began,
with a church that had a stone tower and four broad steps
leading up to its doors. The road turned at the church, plung-
ing suddenly into the town and becoming a narrow, cobble-
stoned street flanked by stone houses crowded one against
the other. The air was cool and almost dank, the sun shut
out by the narrowness of the street. At first sight everything
looked dirty, but then you realized it was just old. The
houses hung over the street in two long, weatherbeaten rows.
"How can they live in a place like this?" Taylor whispered.
We were walking very slowly now, hugging the sides of
the buildings, each man watching the doors and windows
and roofs across the street. But there was nothing to see;
there were no people around. The only sound was of our
heels on the pavement. The town was dead; there was no
breath of life in it at aH. There was not even a Fascist slogan
on a wall. There was only the ancient, narrow, dead town,
and we made our way through it lightly, guns held loosely
and at the ready.

The street began to go downhill. It ran into a little square
with a fountain in the center. Half-way down was an alley
leading off the street. We waited there for a moment while
Riley and Sheehan peered down it. No one was there but
we ran past it bent low. At the bottom of the street,
Riley stepped off the curb to go past the fountain. The

91

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

silence was blasted by two shots that sounded louder than
anything in the world. A man was on one knee behind
the fountain, with a gun at his shoulder. I dove for a door-
way. There were two more shots, close together, and then I
was in the doorway, pressing back as far as I could go. I
got down on one knee, resting my gun against the side of
the doorway, and looked down the street. All I could see at
first was a thin spiral of dust settling in the middle of the
square. Then I spotted Riley in a doorway across the street
and Taylor flat on his belly against the side of a building.
The echo of the shots was still very loud in my ears. There
was a long silence, and then Riley called softly, "Is anyone
hurt?" There was no answer and he repeated the question,
his voice soft but urgent.

"I'm all right," Sheehan's voice said.

"He missed me," Taylor said. "I don't know how, but he
missed me."

I said I was all right, and the men echoed this answer down
the line.

"Where'd he go?" Sheehan asked.

"I don't know," Riley said. "I was too busy ducking."

"I think he went down the street," Taylor said.

No one said anything for a while. Then Riley stepped out
of his doorway and started down the street again. Sheehan
stepped out of a doorway ahead of me, and I stepped out of
mine. I looked back and saw that the rest of the men were
coming. Riley led the way around one side of the square,
giving the fountain plenty of room and sticking close to the

92

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

doorways. Sheehan went around the square on the other
side the same way. We had just got around to the far side
and were starting down the street that led out of it when
another shot was fired. I hit the ground and rolled against
the side of a building. There was a blur of movement at the
end of the street and I fired twice at it, resting my elbows on
the stones of the sidewalk. Riley was also on the ground
near by and I could see his shoulder kick back as he fired.
Then he put his gun down. "Son of a bitch," he said. He got
to his feet. "I saw him that time," he said. I stood up and saw
Taylor come out of a doorway across the street.

"Did you hit him?" Riley asked me.

I said I didn't think so.

"I didn't get a chance," Sheehan said.

"He ran like hell," Riley said. "I got a quick bead on the
bastard and he was gone."

We stood there and then we heard the burst of a tommy
gun to our left. "That's Billerbeck," Sheehan said.

"You hope it's Billerbeck," Riley said.

We listened, but there was no other sound. Riley bent over
and rubbed his knee. "Those stones are hard," he said. He
moved forward and we followed him. It was all quiet again,
but my ears were still ringing from the shots. The air was
different, though; it had the burnt smell of shooting. It was
a faint smell but very noticeable, and it made the town seem
suddenly familiar, linking it with all the other towns in
Sicily which had had that smell. We followed Riley down
the street, walking easier now, knowing finally what we

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KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

were in for. I looked across the street at Taylor and he smiled.
"Isn't this like the movies?" he said. "Isn't this just like the
movies?'*

We came to an intersection and Riley stopped before
crossing it. He peered around the corner and then pulled
his head back in a hurry. He peered around again, took a
good look up the cross street, and then stepped out into the
intersection. "It's Billerbeck," he said. In a few seconds Biller-
beck came walking down to join Riley. His men were strung
out along their street the way we were on ours. "Was that
you firing?" Riley asked.

Billerbeck nodded. "They were running up the street and
we only had time to turn the tommy gun on them," he
said. "Don't think we hit anything."

Riley asked Billerbeck if his squad had been fired on and
Billerbeck said no. He said that they had skirted the edge of
town and were cutting down to meet us when they saw five
Germans running up the street. They were gone before
Billerbeck could do more than fire a few rounds at them.
"I think they're still running," he said.

"Well, I wish they'd make up their mind," Riley said.

Riley told Billerbeck to have his men fall in behind us,
and we all started down the street our squad had been on.
The town was thinning out now. We could see the houses
beginning to space out ahead of us and some trees at the far
end of the street. The street curved and suddenly we were
out in the sun again. There were houses only on our left;
the other side was the mountainside, stretching down in a

94

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

series of plowed terraces, the earth black and fertile. The
road curved again and the houses thinned out still further.
As we came around this curve, we saw two civilians run-
ning from a house that stood off by itself. They disappeared
before we could do anything. We all stopped and looked at
the closed door of the house. The house was a two-story
affair, with a large wooden door and no windows. Riley
dropped to one knee, aiming his rifle at the door. Sheehan
aimed his tommy gun. No one talked. I moved quietly up
to the door and stood at one side of it, with my back against
the house. Taylor moved over to take my place and covered
the door. As soon as all the men were in position, I reached
over and slowly tried the knob. The door was locked. I
pressed against it very slowly, but it wouldn't give. I looked
back at Riley, who nodded, and then I banged the door very
hard with my gun. Almost immediately a woman began to
cry inside. I banged again and she cried louder, and then she
began to yell and shriek. I couldn't understand a word she
said. She was yelling at the top of her lungs and all I could
tell was that she was speaking Italian. "Tedeschi?" I asked,
giving the Italian name for the Germans.

"No," the woman screamed. "No! No!"

I looked over at Riley and he shrugged. He stood up and
called for Caruso, who came running up. He motioned
Caruso to the house and Caruso came over and stood at the
other side of the door. The woman was still screaming and
Caruso had to shout to make himself heard. Finally he yelled
something in Italian that sounded very fierce and the woman

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KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

shut up. For a moment there was no sound. Then the knob
turned and the door slowly opened. A thin, middle-aged
woman with stringy black hair stuck her head out. She
looked first at me, then at Caruso. "Americano?" she asked.
We nodded and Caruso said something in Italian. The
woman looked at us again and then at the other soldiers in
the street. She began to cry. She held her hands to her face
and cried, and then she went over to Caruso and threw her
arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks. She came
over and kissed me and went down the road and kissed the
other men, every one of them, even Lieutenant Riley. She
was crying all the time. After she had finished kissing every-
one, she came back to Caruso and kissed him again. I couldn't
tell now whether she was laughing or crying. She went into
the house and came out with a huge plate of grapes. She
handed them around until Riley finally told Caruso to tell
her that we had some work to do and would see her later.
Caruso told her and the woman smiled and nodded happily.
She went into the house, leaving the door open, and we
moved on down the road.

The road curved twice again. After the first curve it went
downhill and there were no more houses. Riley stopped there
and gazed down the road. It was very quiet. We were in the
country again and there was a hot, summer stillness over
everything, no longer oppressive but still good and hot. The
countryside looked very peaceful. The mountains were hazy
in the distance and olive trees lined the road. "They moved

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

a lot of vehicles out of here," Riley said, studying the road.
He took off his helmet. His hair was matted on his head in
little flat ringlets. As we stood there, an Italian came around
the next curve toward us. He was a very old man in patched
overalls and he was carrying a jug. He looked at us without
interest and was going past us into the town when Riley
stopped him. "What's down there?" Riley asked. The old
man looked at him blankly. "Tedeschi?" Riley asked, point-
ing down the road. The old man nodded, still without in-
terest. He had very bright little eyes set in a deeply lined
face. He must have been eighty years old. "Tedeschi," the
old man said. He waved both hands down the road. "O.K.,"
Riley said. He stepped aside and the old man walked on,
paying no attention to us as he passed.

"I guess they beat it out of here in a hurry," Sheehan said.

Riley scratched his head, then put on his helmet. "We'd
better go back," he said. He sounded regretful. "All we were
supposed to do was find out what was in town," he said.
"There's no sense going any further without more men." I
asked him if he thought there were any more of the enemy in
town and he shook his head. "They ran," he said.

We all turned around and walked slowly back to town,
keeping the same formation but not being as careful as be-
fore. When we got back into the narrow street and the build-
ings closed in on us, Riley stopped and waved us into the
proper intervals. "Let's not get careless," he said. We still
hugged the sides of the buildings, but there was less tension.
When we came to the center of town, we heard voices. In the

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square there was a group of civilians standing around the
fountain. There were men and women and children and
even young girls. We hadn't seen a young girl in five weeks.
As soon as we came up, they began to laugh and cheer. They
made a path for us and then, as we walked along the street,
the whole town came to life. Windows and doors opened
and people came out from everywhere. They stood on the
street and on the balconies and leaned out of windows, and
they all cheered us. It was a regular parade. They even threw
flowers at us. The kids ran alongside, looking at our uni-
forms and guns. The word had been passed around that
Caruso was a countryman and he was immediately sur-
rounded. Everyone was laughing, even the babies. One
woman ran up with a bottle of wine, which she gave to Riley.
Sheehan already had two, one under each arm. Taylor had
his rifle slung over his shoulder and was walking along with
his hands clasped over his head, like a boxer acknowledging
a crowd.

When we got back to the other edge of the town, by the
church, Riley stopped and made sure we were all there.
Then we started down the road to the jeeps, leaving the
townspeople waving at us from the steps of the church. We
passed the house with the machine gun in front but didn't
stop. We didn't bother cutting around the mountain but
went straight down the road. On the way we passed an old
German bivouac area, with neatly dug foxholes and empty
cases of ammunition lying around. There were also several

THE TAKING OF FICARRA

empty S-mine boxes and we stopped to look at them. "The
dirty bastards," Taylor said.

When we got to the jeeps we found the prisoners sitting
on the bank of the road, surrounded by the drivers. Riley
asked Johns if he had heard any shots and Johns said that
he hadn't. The prisoners seemed happier now and were
smoking American cigarettes. They looked seedy, anxious
to please, and very human. They smiled at us when we came
up. Sheehan said, "Smile, you sons of bitches." None of them
did any talking, not even to each other. They just smiled
at us with an apologetic air. "I'd like to shoot the four of
them," one of our men said. I think that was what we all
felt, but nobody did anything about it. There would have
been no satisfaction in killing them now. There was no
satisfaction in doing anything to them once you had them.
There was only the impotent hatred, the inability even to
say, "See where you are now." So all we did was look at them.
Finally we put them into our four jeeps, one man into each.
Then the rest of us climbed in and we drove slowly back
down the road.

—July 1943.

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VIII. BUSY MORNING

w

MOVED into the new regimental command post at
eight o'clock in the morning. A command post, better known
as a C.P., is a field headquarters. We were thirty miles out
of Messina in Sicily, working our way slowly along the north
coast toward the Italian mainland. Usually the regimental
C.P. is several miles back of the lines, but the colonel com-
manding this regiment believed in getting as close to the
front as he could without actually outstripping his infantry.
Right then the C.P. was only a mile and a half from the
enemy, or was believed to be only that far. There was still
some uncertainty about just where the front was. The C.P.
was hidden in a fairly dense grove of trees between a road
and the sea. The trees were no protection against anything
serious, but they were good concealment. On the other side
of the road was a series of ridges running at right angles to
it, and the gullies between the ridges offered cover. It was
about two hundred yards from the C.P. to these gullies.

The C.P. area had been an enemy motor park and it was
full of abandoned Italian trucks with their tires removed.
There were also a few damaged motorcycles. It didn't look
as though the area had been used for troops, because there
were no foxholes. The Germans and Italians always dug fox-
holes, even when they knew they were stopping for only a

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short time. The Germans dug good foxholes, and they came
in handy when we took over, but the Italian foxholes were
works of art. You could put an army into an Italian foxhole
dug for one man. All they lacked was running water. You
had to be careful getting into them, because the Italians
would booby-trap the holes before they left. I reached the
area in a jeep driven by Lieutenant Riley. He drove it skill-
fully down a steep embankment, through a bramblebush,
and into the shade of a large elm tree in the grove. All around
us trucks and other jeeps were being parked. A captain was
walking around yelling, "Fifty feet between vehicles! Fifty
feet between vehicles!" Riley got out of our jeep. He had
to see the regimental intelligence officer to get his assign-
ment, he said. He walked off between the trees and I leaned
back in my seat and took it easy. The day promised to be hot
and muggy.

The parking area gradually filled up. As soon as the drivers
had parked their vehicles, they started camouflaging them
with the special camouflage nets they carried in their ma-
chines. Over in one corner of the area, at the edge of the
grove, was a medical tent with a large red cross on it. Back
of our jeep was a supply truck from which a mess sergeant
was unloading boxes of rations and five-gallon cans of water.
Everybody was working. The scene might just have been
maneuvers in Louisiana or North Carolina.

After a while Riley returned with Taylor. "Taylor and I
are going up front," Riley said. "Just the two of us." He told
Taylor to take the jeep away, fill it with gas, and meet him

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up on the road. The lieutenant and I walked up there to
wait for the jeep, and he explained the situation. It seemed
that the enemy was directly ahead and close, but no one knew
how close or in how much strength. The road crossed a dry
river bed about two miles ahead and the colonel thought
that perhaps the enemy had withdrawn across it. One com-
pany of the regiment was already advancing across the ridges
on the river. That was H Company. Two more were on
their way up from behind the C.P. Riley's job was to set up
an observation post overlooking the river and see what he
could see. As we reached the road, we saw another company
— L Company — coming up from the rear. The men were
strung out on both sides of the road at five-yard intervals. A
tall, handsome lieutenant was leading them. Riley waved to
him. "Where are you headed, Johnny?" Riley called.

"Where do you think we're headed?" Johnny said. He
didn't stop walking, turned his head as he passed so that
he could keep talking to Riley. He looked a little like Gary
Cooper, only younger, and very healthy. He had two rifles
slung over one shoulder and I noticed that the soldier walk-
ing behind him didn't have any.

"I hear there's trouble up front," Riley said.

"That's no skin of? me," Johnny said. "I got orders."

"You shouldn't go up there without a reconnaissance,"
Riley said. "Whose orders are they?"

"How should I know?" Johnny said. "All I know is that I
got them." He laughed and waved his hand. "See you later,
Riley," he said.

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"See you later," Riley said, and, turning back to me, he
added, "Johnny's a good boy. We went to OCS together."
He shook his head and said, "But he shouldn't go up there
without reconnaissance."

A little later, Taylor drove up with the jeep. Riley climbed
in and they drove off. The company was still coming down
the road, marching slowly, with the heavy, pushing step of
men who are almost through. The regiment had been in the
line for a week now and most of that time had been spent
hiking over the sheer, Sicilian mountains, carrying rifles
and machine guns and mortars, chasing the enemy and never
quite catching him. That had been the whole pattern of the
war along this north coast : the Germans retreating, blowing
up bridges, laying mines, blasting the road with artillery as
they retreated, rarely making a stand unless they were sure
of taking a heavy toll before they retreated again. They had
made a stand two days before on top of a mountain, and
this company marching down the road had climbed the
mountain and taken it. But first they had lain at the foot of
the mountain for twelve hours while the Germans tried to
blow them out with cannon. The company had had just
six hours' sleep since then, and you could see it on the soldiers'
faces and in the way they walked.

After L Company was out of sight, I went back to my
reconnaissance platoon, which was waiting for orders. There
wasn't anything to do, so I decided to shave. I hadn't had a
chance to shave for three days and some general had issued

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orders that we were to shave every two days. My musette bag
was in one of the other jeeps and I went to get it. Sitting
in the jeep, reading a two-month-old copy of PM, was the
platoon sergeant, a boy named Vrana. He was a commer-
cial artist who had joined the Regular Army five years ago
because he thought the war was imminent and he wanted
to get into it. I got my shaving stufT and propped the mirror
up on the hood of the jeep. Then I filled my helmet from
a can of water on the back of the jeep. I was preparing to
lather my face when there was a whining noise overhead.
I put down my brush, Vrana put down his paper, and
we both listened. There was a faint crash that sounded as
if it were a mile back of us. "Now I wonder what that
was," Vrana said. We knew what it was. It was an enemy
artillery shell that had overshot us. But maybe if we were
skeptical, it would go away. Then there was another whine,
and the next crash sounded closer. "He's shortening the
range," Vrana said. I rinsed off the brush, dried it carefully,
and put it back in my bag. I emptied my helmet and put it
on. There was another whine, but closer, and we both hit
the ground as a shell crashed a hundred yards down the
road. "This is not for me," Vrana said. He was reading his
newspaper on the ground, half under the jeep.

All around the area, men were picking themselves up and
looking at each other. Work had stopped. We were all wait-
ing for the next one. It came. It started with the whine
and grew into the sudden rush of air that meant it was very
near. I was on my face when it hit, fifty yards away. I could

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see the dust rising at the back of the C.P., where it hit. "The
gully for us," Vrana said. We started for the nearest gully,
two hundred yards away, at a slow trot. Everyone else
seemed to be heading in the same direction. Then there was
another whine, and still another, the low whistle rising until
it became the violent, sucked-in whine that meant it was
coming very close, and we were flat on the ground, trying
to crawl inside. "They got it," said Vrana. He meant the
range. We stood up and started to run. Everybody was run-
ning. There was the whine again and I dove as though of! a
diving board and bellyflopped on the ground. The dirt was
dry and gritty in my mouth. The whine grew louder and
louder, coming straight at me, and I opened my mouth
against it. There was a crash like the sky falling in, and the
ground heaved and something whistled viciously over my
head, and then dirt was dropping quietly around, like
rain.

There was another whine, and another, and another. They
came like death. There was nothing to do but press into the
ground and wait. Three more came, one after the other. I
put my face in the dirt and tried to dig deeper with my knees.
There were three more. It was like trying to hold on to the
rail of a ship in a storm, only there was nothing to hang on
to, nothing. I thought of a leather handbag my wife and I
had once seen in the window of John-Frederics in New
York. It was the most beautiful bag we had ever seen, simple
and wonderfully worked, but it was too expensive, and I
thought now, the shells falling like the end of the world:

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We should have bought the bag, we should have bought the
bag. Another three came. It must have been a whole battery
firing at us. Through the noise I could hear someone shout-
ing, "Medics! Medics!" There was a pause and I got to my
feet and ran for the gully again, my breath coming short and
painful. I didn't know where Vrana was. Out of the corner
of one eye I could see another soldier running beside me,
but I didn't know who he was. Everybody was running for
the gully. It was the longest two hundred yards I have ever
covered. I finally reached the road and started across it.
There was a captain on the road, directing everyone into
the gullies. It was the same captain who had ordered the
jeeps fifty feet apart, but now he was wearing only one leg-
ging. I wondered what had happened to the other legging.
The other soldier was ahead of me now. I followed him up
a bank and down a little path. I thought I was going fast,
but he was really traveling. Then we were in the gully, the
protecting walls of the ridges rising on either side, and the
soldier slowed up. "Son of a bitch," I heard him say, and
then I saw the two stars on his collar. My God, I said to my-
self, it's a general.

I followed the general along the gully until I came upon
Vrana, sitting with his back against one side of it. I sat down
next to him. He was reading his newspaper. The gully was
full of men from the C.P., most of them sitting or lying on
the ground, waiting out the barrage. The shells were still
coming and we could hear them whistle over our heads and
crash in the C.P. area. They were coming about one every

1 06

BUSY MORNING

thirty seconds. A lot of the men were still breathing hard from
the run; the rest were just sitting and talking. Next to me
was a lieutenant with artillery insignia on his collar. He
looked disgusted, and explained that he was supposed to be
back with his battery and had just come up to headquarters
on a liaison mission when the shelling began. "They're going
to wonder what happened to me," he said gloomily. "They're
going to think I went over to the god-damn infantry." The
men around him didn't take 'too kindly to this and began
asking him where was this artillery support they had been
hearing so much about. "Don't worry," the lieutenant said.
"Don't worry."

"Who's worrying?" said a small, grimy private. "Am I
worrying? Do I look like I'm worrying?" His face was
smeared with dirt, which he had probably picked up when
he hit the ground. "I'm not the worrying type," he went on.
"I'm just curious. I'm the curious type. I just want to know
when the hell I'm getting out of this hole."

Another shell whined overhead and crashed in the C.P.
"They must have beautiful observation," the artillery lieu-
tenant said, with professional admiration.

"Please," the small private said. "How about our beautiful
observation?"

There was a loud boom to our rear and everyone jumped.
The artillery lieutenant just leaned back and smiled.

"Well, it's about time," the private said.

There was another boom and then a whole salvo. It was a
highly reassuring sound. Our own artillery was firing back.

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Our observers must have spotted a target, because the guns
let off two more salvos. We could hear the shells crackle
overhead, going the other way. The enemy guns had stopped
firing and after the third salvo our guns stopped too. For
a moment all was peace and quiet. Then there was another
whine and a shell burst in the C.P. This was immediately
answered by another salvo from our guns. "Battery salvo,"
the artillery lieutenant said. "They must have spotted some-
thing." There was no answer from the enemy guns, and
very gradually everyone relaxed.

When five minutes had gone by without any enemy fire,
some of the men began climbing back to the road. The
artillery lieutenant stood up and sighed. "Hope they didn't
hit my jeep," he said. "I got five bottles of wine in it."

He moved off and Vrana and I stood up to follow him.
"Might as well go back," Vrana said. We started toward the
road. "Heigh ho, heigh ho," Vrana said. "Now off to work
we go." He was still carrying his newspaper. "I wish they'd
give me time to finish this damned thing," he said.

When Vrana and I got back to the road we found Taylor
in Lieutenant Riley's jeep, parked at the entrance to the
C.P. "Where the hell have you been?" he asked Vrana.

"I've been getting my nails done," Vrana said. "Where
the hell do you think I've been?"

"Well, the lieutenant wants two more men up there,"
Taylor said. "We've got an O.P. on top of a hill and he wants
another observer and someone to work a radio."

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BUSY MORNING

Vrana told me to go as the observer. "I'll get Billerbeck for
the radio," Vrana said, and walked back into the C.P.

The men were still streaming out from the gullies and the
captain with only one legging came over and told Taylor to
move the jeep out of the way. I got into the jeep and Taylor
drove fifty yards back up the road. I asked him where he had
been when the shelling was on and he said he had been on
his way back from the hill overlooking the river. "They're
having trouble up front," he said. "I think L Company
marched right into an 88." I asked if anyone had been hurt
and Taylor shrugged. "The ambulance came up," he said.
I told him what had happened to us at the C.P. He shook
his head sadly. "This is no way to make a living," he said.

After a few minutes Vrana came down the road with
Sergeant Billerbeck. Billerbeck was carrying a hand radio
set, the kind that has a collapsible aerial. I asked Vrana if
much damage had been done to the C.P. "They hit the
medic's tent," he said.

"Was anyone there?" Taylor asked.

Vrana nodded. None of us said anything. We all knew that
the C.P. was a legitimate military objective and that you
couldn't call your shots on the nose at seven miles, but it
wasn't right for the medic's tent to be hit. "A couple of
other guys were hit by shrapnel," Vrana said. He mentioned
their names. There was nothing else to say, so Taylor started
the jeep's motor and Billerbeck climbed into the back. "Your
call is Item Roger One," Vrana said to Billerbeck. "I'll be
Item Roger."

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"Check," Billerbeck said.

Vrana stepped back and Taylor turned the jeep around
carefully, trying to keep off the dirt shoulder of the road in
case it had been mined. He moved past the C.P. in second
and then whipped into high. The jeep jumped forward and
Taylor pushed the accelerator to the floor. "Excuse the
speed!" he yelled to me above the noise. "I think they got
the road under observation."

We swept along the road. I held on grimly. The road was
full of curves, and Taylor slowed down before each curve
and then gunned the car as soon as he was around it. The
idea was to cover the straightaways as fast as possible before
anyone could draw a bead on you. I crouched in my seat,
trying to stick with the car and make myself as inconspicu-
ous as possible. After a few minutes we sped past a lot of
infantrymen, seated on the bank of the road. Some of them
waved at us. Ahead of us the road ran down almost to the
sea and then there was a long straightaway with what looked
like a very sharp curve at the end of it. We came into this
stretch, and some soldiers seated by the road yelled as we
went past. "What did they say?" Taylor shouted. I hadn't
understood either, but Billerbeck leaned forward and shouted,
"They said there's an 88 trained on that curve up there!"

The road now was straight and flat, and I felt very naked.
On our right were fields running up to the ridges and on
the left was a stretch of beach along the sea. Up ahead, past
the curve, there was an old barge aground on the beach.
There was no sign of life, but I knew how much that meant

no

USY MORNING

We were nearing the curve and I tried to sink a little lower
in my seat. Taylor jammed on the brakes and pulled over to
one side. "This is where we get off," he said. He hopped out
of the jeep and started to walk up the road. Billerbeck and I
followed him. "Keep your eye on that barge," he said. "We
think maybe they're directing fire from there."

We were almost up to the curve now. The fields on our
right had become a grove of trees. There was a path going
off the road into the wood. Taylor started up it. It felt good to
get some concealment. When we got into the grove, Taylor
stopped and took out his pistol. I took out mine too. I had my
doubts about the effectiveness of a .45 against an 88-milli-
meter cannon, but it was nice having something in your
hand. I only wished I knew what the hell was going on.
Taylor led the way slowly through the trees. Soon I saw why
he had drawn his gun. There was a small house ahead of
us. Taylor made a wide circle around the house, always
facing it. Once he stopped and we all froze, but nothing
happened. The house sat there, dappled by the sunlight
through the trees, looking quiet and innocent. We got past
the house, and the hill became steeper. We passed over a
burned spot where a shell had hit. The earth was blackened
and raw. Then there was another house, but Taylor led the
way right past this time. Outside it were a table and a large
easychair. The Germans had evidently had a C.P. or an ob-
servation post there. There were three mattresses on the
ground and papers scattered around the table. There was
also a large foxhole, practically a dugout. We walked past

in

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

them all without touching anything. The hill was steeper
now and it was hard climbing. There were onion skins and
tomatoes all around; the enemy must have eaten well.

When we were almost at the crest, Taylor stopped and
whistled softly. There was a movement at the top and Lieu-
tenant Riley came sliding down. He was smiling. The first
thing he asked was whether we had had a pleasant trip. His
helmet was covered with twigs and leaves were stuck into
the helmet net. "I feel like a woman with all this greenery
on my head," he said. I wondered what he was so happy
about. We all sat down on the hillside. Riley took off his
helmet and laid it beside him. Billerbeck already had his
aerial up and was trying to make contact with Vrana. "Item
Roger," he called, his mouth close to the speaker. "Item
Roger. This is Item Roger One." He pronounced the words
very carefully, exaggerating each syllable. He had no suc-
cess the first few times, then Vrana's voice suddenly came
back, thin and metallic: 'This is Item Roger."

"Ask him if there are any messages," Riley said.

Billerbeck relayed the question. There was a pause and
then Vrana's voice said, "Artillery wants to know where
they're hitting."

"O.K.," Riley said.

"This is Item Roger One," Billerbeck said over the radio.
"Roger. Willco. Over and out." He was saying he had heard
the message, would cooperate, and was now closing his set.

Riley put on his helmet and stood up. "You stay here," he
said to Billerbeck. He started back up the hill and motioned

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BUSY MORNING

to Taylor and me to follow him. When he got near the top,
he dropped down on his stomach and began to crawl, mo-
tioning us to do the same. We crawled to the crest of the
hill and looked over.

We were looking almost straight down on the bed of the
river, which was dry and rocky. There were two bridges
across it, a wooden railroad bridge to our left and a stone
highway bridge almost directly beneatl^us. Both of them
had been blown up. The stone bridge gaped in the middle.
The railroad bridge had also been blasted at the center and
the two ends leaned down toward the river bed. Across the
river was a ridge like ours, dropping down to the sea in
a series of hills, each a little lower than the one before, and
there was a town on top of one of the hills. The highway
disappeared over the ridge on the other side of the river. We
couldn't see the road at all on our side.

There was nothing stirring, no sign of life anywhere, not
even in the town. It was a little surprising after the violence
of the shelling we had undergone and the reports of trouble
with an 88 along the road. You expected more than a quiet,
normal countryside. Riley pointed to the bit of road we
could see across the river. "That's where they had the 88,"
he said. "Right out in the middle of the road." I asked if he
had seen it. "Sure I saw it," he said. The trouble with the
88 had happened just as Riley and Taylor had come up to
the crest. They had seen the enemy gun sitting out in the
road, across the blown-up highway bridge, waiting for L

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

Company to come around that last curve, but there hadn't
been time for them to do anything about it. The company
had started to march around the curve before Riley could get
word down. Luckily, the enemy had been too anxious and
had fired when only the first few men had come into view.
Riley didn't think many had been hurt. The 88 had fired
only twice; then it had been pulled out of sight. "I think
they were the rear guard," Riley said. "They just wanted
to get one last lick/'

We lay there about five minutes and then we heard the
whistle of a shell over our heads. It was going toward the
enemy. We watched to see where it would land. We heard
the dull crump as it hit, but we couldn't see where. Three
more shells came over, crackling through the air, but it was
the same with them. "They're shooting over the ridge," said
Riley, who was looking through field glasses. He turned
to Taylor and told him to relay the information back to
Vrana. Taylor slithered away and we tried again to see
where the shells were landing. Finally we gave up and Riley
turned his glasses on the town, looking for signs of life or
gun emplacements. The town still seemed dead to me. I lay
down beside a rock and looked around. It was warm and
lazy on top of the hill. Off to our left the Mediterranean
glittered in the haze. I heard a cowbell ringing, very faintly.
I picked up some dirt and let it sift through my fingers. A
tiny lizard ran out from under the rock and stopped, his
tongue flickering in and out. I threw the dirt at him and he
fled back under the rock. I put my head on my arms. The

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civilian sun was hot and pleasant. I closed my eyes and
Riley said, "I can't see a damned thing. If you ask me, I
think they pulled out."

There was a whine through the air and a shell crashed off
to our left. I opened my eyes. A cloud of dust drifted up
from the beach beside the grounded barge. There was an-
other whine and crash, and this time the shell hit the water
about twenty feet from the barge. I asked Riley if it was
our side or the other side firing and he shook his head.
"Damned if I know," he said. "I think maybe they had an
O.P. there and they had to leave some stuff they don't want
us to get." I wondered if somewhere there was someone who
always knew exactly what was going on. Shells were being
put all around the barge, but none of them was hitting. Then
one hit right on the bow. The whole barge shook and pieces
of wood flew every which way. Another shell landed in the
water and then one hit square in the middle of the barge.
Half the vessel went flying into the air. "Give the gentleman
a cigar," Riley said.

There was no more shooting after that. Riley and I turned
our attention once more to the ridge opposite us, but there
was nothing doing there, either. "I'm sure they pulled out,"
Riley said. He looked hard at the town. "Wait a minute," he
said. He handed me the glasses and told me to look where
a dirt road, winding down the ridge, entered the lower part
of the town. People were walking up that road. "They look
like doggies to me," Riley said. It was hard to tell. They

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walked like Americans. "I'll bet it's H Company, that came
across the ridges," Riley said. Once we had spotted the men,
we could see them without field glasses. There were six of
them, walking up the road. "They're our boys," Riley said
positively. "That means the Jerries have cleared out." He
began to wriggle back down the hill. I followed him. We
stood up when we got far enough down, then slid on our
feet to where Taylor and Billerbeck were sitting. Riley told
Billerbeck to get Vrana on the radio and have him tell the
colonel that H Company had entered the town across the
river. Billerbeck tried, but this time there was no answer.
Riley thought for a minute and then told Billerbeck to drive
back to the C.P. and tell the colonel himself. Billerbeck pulled
in his aerial and started down the hill toward our jeep.

After a while, Riley said to Taylor and me, "We may as
well go back, too. We're not doing any good up here." He
led the way down the hill, not using the course we had taken
coming up. We passed more mattresses and Taylor said,
"They must have had officers sleeping here." We cut across a
field at the foot of the hill, fifty yards down the road from
where we had entered. A gate in a stone fence opened onto
the road. Riley started for it and then stopped. "That's a bad
idea," he said. He hopped over the stone fence onto the road.
No one was around. We had just started back to the C.P.
when a jeep came toward us. In it was a very young lieu-
tenant from regimental headquarters who was in charge
of the wire section. He couldn't have been more than twenty.

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He stopped alongside us. "How's it going up there, Riley?"
he asked.

Riley told him the highway bridge was blown up.

"That means we won't be able to lay wire until the engi-
neers have cleared," the lieutenant said. He was just growing
a mustache; the little hairs were blond and fuzzy. "Nothing
to do but wait," he said. He backed up the jeep and turned
it around. He put it into gear to start off, then stopped. "You
hear about Johnny?" he said to Riley.

"What about him?" Riley said.

"He was killed leading L Company around that curve,"
the lieutenant said. "An 88 got him."

The young lieutenant started off, clashing the gears as he
went into second. "He's going to strip those gears," Riley
said absently. Riley, Taylor, and I silently started along the
road again. Presently Riley said, "I told him there was
trouble up here." The road was still deserted. On our right,
the beach dropped off to the sea, sparkling in the sun, waiting
for the bathers. "He never should have gone up without a
reconnaissance," Riley said. He shook his head. "I wonder
whose orders they were."

We walked around a curve and there were the infantry-
men, still sitting along the road. They were eating now,
cooking cans of meat over other cans filled with burning
gasoline. They looked at us expressionlessly as we went by. I
figured this must have been the company that got it. We
passed a soldier sitting by himself, with a bandage on his

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forehead, and he asked us what was doing up front. Riley
said that the Jerries had retreated.

"I thought they'd fight here," the soldier said. His face
was lined with sweat and dirt and he looked very tired.

"No," Riley said. "They retreated."

The soldier lay back and closed his eyes. "Good," he said
softly.

We began to encounter a lot of activity, and before long
we had to walk along the edge of the road. Vehicles were
coming past us, going toward the river. The rest of the regi-
ment was moving up, following the enemy. We passed some
engineers who were clearing mines off the sides of the road,
the strange mechanical apparatus fastened to their chests and
the long detector rods stretched out before them, looking
like shuffleboard poles. They were using the poles like divin-
ing rods, working carefully and silently, so carefully that it
looked like a slow-motion movie. The only sound was the
sudden hum of one of the contraptions when it located a
mine. We walked past the engineers and past an artillery
battery setting up beside the road. "I guess they'll send me
to that town this afternoon to set up another O.P.," Riley
said.

More vehicles rushed past us — the engineers to restore
the blown-up bridge, the sappers to clear the road of mines,
the anti-aircraft guns to protect the men. I asked Riley what
time it was. "Eleven o'clock," he said. I asked him if he was
sure, and he nodded.

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BUSY MORNING

"It seems like four in the afternoon," Taylor said, and
sighed. "I feel I've done a day's work already." A truck
roared past, pulling a howitzer. "I would like to sleep for
two years," Taylor said.

There was the sound of a plane and we stopped, suddenly
wary, but the sound went away. "I wonder what we have for
chow today," Riley said. I said I didn't know. I wasn't
very hungry; I was just tired. We walked along and sud-
denly there was a loud explosion back of us. We stopped. It
was a sound we had all heard too often. "It's a mine," Taylor
said. "Some poor bastard stepped on a mine." We started
to walk again, but now it was different. Taylor was walk-
ing beside me, his jaw tight, shaking his head a little from
side to side.

An ambulance passed us, racing toward the scene of the
explosion. "God-damn them," Taylor finally said. "God-
damn them." We were almost to the C.P. now. I could see
the men packing the stuff back on the trucks to move up
again. "I hope we have time to get something to eat," Riley
said.

—August 1943.

119

IX. I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE

1 1 IF.

I HERE is a nice sound to the phrase "mountain warfare."
It has a ring of daring; it sounds cleaner than trench war-
fare and lighter than tank warfare. The only thing that can
match it is war in the air, and that has become too deadly
to be nice any more. It has also become too familiar, while
war in the mountains is still strange enough to sound ro-
mantic. Except, of course, to the men who have to fight it.

I spent some time last winter on temporary duty with
an infantry battalion operating in the Italian mountains
against the Germans. When I got my orders I tried to find
out where the battalion was, but no one seemed to know.
Everyone agreed, however, that information could be ob-
tained at a certain village on top of a mountain. It was not
quite clear who held that mountain, but everyone said I
could find out there one way or another. So I got my bed-
ding roll and hitched along the front until I came to the
base of this mountain. There was a crossroads here, with
one dirt road running along a valley up to the contact line
and another road winding out of sight up the mountain.
A worried M.P. stood at the crossroads, directing traffic.
He had reason to be worried; German artillery had been

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shelling the crossroads all day. Nothing had hit closer than
a hundred yards from the M.P., but that was close enough
for him. While we were standing there another shell came
over and hit an already bombed-out house about fifty yards
down the road. We hit the ground and stayed there while
rocks flew all over the place. When we got up the M.P.
was shaking with rage. "The dirty bastards," he kept saying.
I figured he meant the Germans and added a few words
of my own, but then he added, "Those dirty bastards who
keep telling me how soft I got it in the M.P.S."

There was not much traffic, and that kept along the val-
ley. The sun was on the way down, but still held warmth.
I sat on a rock by the road and waited. A few more shells
came over, but not anywhere near. Finally a jeep with a
trailer full of rations came up from the rear and turned
onto the mountain road. I flagged it down and hopped in
beside the driver. He said he was going up to the battalion
supply dump. The road wound dizzily up the mountain;
the windshield was down so it wouldn't reflect the sun to
planes, and the cold wind cut my face. In the valley below
were puffs of white smoke from one of our artillery bat-
teries. Then the road climbed over the top of the mountain
and dipped into a plateau. Everything else was immediately
shut out; there was only the sky and the cupped plateau,
with a tiny village in the center. We stopped at a house on
the outskirts. Six mules stood patiently in front of the house,
and some officers and men lounged around. I got out and
the driver continued into the village. I went up to a tall,

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blond captain sitting on the porch and asked how to get
to the battalion. He said the battalion was on another moun-
tain, but these mules were soon to be packed and taken there
and I could go along. The captain said the enlisted men
were going up with the mules. The officers were staying
behind. They were specialists in mountain climbing, skiing
and mule packing, but so far they had only packed mules.
The captain's name was Mueller and he was fresh from a
well-known ski division in the States. I had a friend named
Smith in this division and asked Mueller if he knew him.
"Sure I know him," Mueller said amiably. "The son of a
bitch owes me ten dollars."

There were four enlisted men waiting to go back with
the mules, but on'ly three had come down from the battalion.
The fourth was rejoining the outfit from a hospital. He
was a short, red-haired boy named Kramer; this was not
his real name, but he was A.W.O.L. from the hospital and
afraid they would send him back. He had been wounded
in the shoulder and was not yet fully recovered, but he
said the hospital had been too GI; he felt he would recover
better in a more relaxed atmosphere. When the sun was al-
most down, one of the men suggested to Mueller that they
get the mules packed. Mueller nodded and three lieutenants
went over to the mules and started to work. They worked
slowly and very methodically; in the Air Force they would
have been called "eager." It was apparent that they were
very new at the front, not because they were so thorough,
but because of a certain air of seriousness about them; they

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were like officers I remembered from training in the States,
who would show you how to make a bed with the same
intensity as how to shoot a rifle. At last they stood back and
eyed the mules carefully. It was hard to see the mules ,for
the ration boxes. "I think that will hold for a while," one
of the lieutenants said modestly. The three enlisted men
each took the halters of two mules and started off without
saying a word. I said good-by to Mueller and fell in behind
with Kramer. We followed the dirt road the way I had come,
then cut or! on a little trail that wound across the plateau
and down the other side of the mountain. As soon as we
got out of sight of the house, the soldiers stopped and re-
adjusted the packs. Then we started off again.

It was dark when we got to the foot of the mountain. I
couldn't feel any trail underneath, but they seemed to know
where they were going. We crossed a little valley and started
up another mountain. We had to stop several times for
breath. When we reached the top we walked along the
crest. It was very dark and- cold. Kramer and I talked for
a while, mostly about food, then shut up and just walked.
Artillery flashed in the sky ahead of us, like heat lightning.
My watch said five minutes after twelve when we stopped.
Kramer said, "Guess we're here." It didn't look as if we
were anywhere, but the others were already unloading the
mules. Kramer and I helped, dropping the ration boxes
where we stood. One of the soldiers said we could sleep
here until morning; the battalion was all around us, but
there was no sense looking for them now. I unrolled my

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

blanket and shelter half, then rolled up again in them. I
fell asleep right away.

There was light mist on the ground when I awoke. Kra-
mer was beside me, wrapped in a German blanket. He
stirred when I got up and said, "I should have stood in the
hospital." The mist rose as I made my roll; we were on
another plateau, spotted with clumps of trees. I could see
other mountain tops surrounding us through the mist. There
was the sound of talking near by and Kramer said, "Let's
get some breakfast." We walked over a little rise; in a hol-
low were four soldiers seated around a fire.

"Why, you gold-bricking son of a gun," one of them said
to Kramer. "I bet it took six M.P.S to bring you back."

Kramer told him pleasantly where he could go, then we
sat down with them. They all looked equally dirty, unshaven,
and worn out. One was evidently a lieutenant, since a helmet
on the ground had a gold bar painted on it, but I couldn't
tell which one. They were eating K rations and heating can-
teen cups of coffee over the fire. I got a breakfast ration from
one of the men, slit it open, ate the fruit bar, made the coffee,
and opened the chopped ham and eggs and placed it near the
fire. I put the biscuits in my pocket, in case I was some day
reduced to absolute starvation. While we ate, Kramer told
them where he had been. They all told him he was a fool
for leaving the hospital. "Stinky 's got us marchin' over
every damned mountain in Italy," a tall boy with a Southern
accent said. I asked who Stinky was. "Colonel Williams,"
Kramer said, "Battalion C.O." I asked how he was and the

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Southern boy said with considerable affection, "Stinky's a
fightin' bastard. He's goin' to get us all killed dead one of
these days."

After breakfast I asked the way to battalion C.P. and
they pointed across a clearing. "It's in a little house across
there," the Southern boy said, "but you'd better watch it
goin' across. There's been kraut planes around." I said I'd
be careful. "See you later," Kramer said. I got up and ran
across the clearing. The house was just on the other side,
hidden by trees. It was made of stone and looked like an
outhouse. Outside was a staff sergeant, tying up a bedding
roll. I asked where the colonel was and he said the colonel
was meeting with the company commanders. The sergeant's
name was Kinsey and he was battalion sergeant major. He
said the colonel was briefing the other officers, because we
were moving out this afternoon. I asked him what our posi-
tion was and he said he didn't know and didn't think any-
one else knew either. He said the battalion had been out
of contact with the Germans for two days now and were
just moving ahead until they made contact. He said I could
go up ahead to the edge of the mountain and take a
look.

I left Kinsey and walked along a path until it forked,
then followed the right fork up the side of the mountain.
At the top were a captain and a sergeant, lying on their
stomachs and looking through field glasses. I said hello and
slid down beside them. I wondered how many views there
were like this in Italy: mountain, valley, little village and

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more mountain. It had been beautiful once, but now you
could not look at it any more as a scene. You looked at trees
for 88s and at houses for observation posts. Too many men
had died trying to get a view like this; it was not as inno-
cent as it looked.

The captain wore artillery insignia and I asked him where
his artillery was. "Oh, we left that behind two days ago,"
he said cheerfully. "They couldn't get over the mountains.
We're just looking to see what targets we'd have if we had
artillery." The captain was named Llewellyn; the sergeant,
who was large and blond, was just called Moose. They
were target spotters and liaison for the battalion's artillery,
when it was close enough to function. The targets they
were hopefully picking out were in the valley town. I asked
who had the town and Moose said the British were in it
now. "We had patrols in there first," he said, "but it's in the
British sector, so we had to pull out and let the Limeys
take it officially."

"They can have it," Llewellyn said. "The wine was no
good anyhow."

After a while I went back to the C.P. Kinscy was still out
in front, talking to a private named D'Crenzo, who turned
out to be the battalion draftsman. "Any time you want a
golf lesson, just see D'Crenzo," Kinsey said. "He used to
be a pro." D'Crenzo and I talked golf the rest of the morn-
ing, while Kinsey made up the battalion roster. He would
shake his head every time he added up a company total
and say, "If the krauts only knew what we had." The bat-

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I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE

talion was considerably under strength, due more to the
Italian winter than to enemy action. No one had bothered
sending replacements for these casualties, probably because
it was too difficult finding the battalion. Colonel Williams
returned later in the afternoon: a short, dark, balding man
with a mustache. He looked at least forty, but D'Crenzo
said he was closer to thirty. "You should have seen him
back in the States," D'Crenzo said. "He looked like a kid."
The colonel told Kinsey to get ready, we were leaving in
a few minutes.

"Where are we going?" Kinsey asked.

"To another god-damned mountain," the colonel said.

When the battalion staff section was assembled, the colonel
led us down the path to the edge of the mountain. We passed
the other companies waiting along the path. The men looked
tired and bowed down under their equipment. The colonel
started over the edge without pause, picking his way among
the rocks. "Oh, well," said a voice in back of me. "Here we
go again."

The night was like all other nights. We stumbled down
one mountain and crawled up another. We crossed a stream
with the water up to our knees. No one talked; no one
sang. We didn't know where we were going or what we
would find when we got there. Some of the officers might
have known, but they probably weren't very sure. We didn't
know where the enemy was. We didn't even know where
we were. We just walked. There was nothing at all nice
about the walk. It was dirty, tiring, dangerous and without

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immediate compensation, and it was exactly what this war
was like to most of the men in it. No matter how they felt
about the war, this was how it was fought. And there were
no Purple Hearts for either trench foot or jaundice.

We finally came to a village on top of another mountain
and marched quietly through, the noise of our feet like
sand on the cobblestones. The village was dark and asleep.
The colonel stopped on the other side of town and went off
to disperse the companies along the mountain in case of
attack. "Another delightful place to spend the night," Kin-
sey said. I looked around and found a space hollowed out
between two rocks. I unrolled my pack there and crawled
in. It was very cold. I drew my knees up to my neck and
pulled the blanket over my head, but couldn't sleep. I just
lay there and shivered most of the night, and finally fell
asleep toward morning. When I got up, we were in the
clouds. They were all around us, between our mountain
and the others. It gave you the feeling of being so far above
the world that even airplane flight went on below. Kinsey
and D'Crenzo were a few yards away, trying to start a
fire. I joined them and they said the colonel was in town,
trying to set up a C.P. We got the fire started, but none
of us had any rations. Kinsey had a couple of bouillon
packages and I had the biscuits from the day before, so we
had them. The biscuits were edible if you heated them
first. The colonel returned while we were eating. "We're
moving into the mayor's house," he told Kinsey.

"Where's the mayor going to stay?" Kinsey asked.

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I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE

"He's dead," the colonel said. "The krauts strung him up
just before they left."

The three of us got our equipment and walked back up
the road into the village. The houses were old and close
together. It was like all the other Italian villages we had
come through, except that this one had not been shelled.
We came to a house with some civilians standing outside
and D'Crenzo asked in Italian if this was the mayor's house.
They nodded vigorously, so we went in. The door opened
into a little hall. To the right was a large kitchen with a
fireplace and to the left was a dining room. A flight of
stairs probably led to bedrooms. We went into the kitchen.
A pretty, black-haired girl, a middle-aged lady, an old man,
and a young man in knickers stood by the fireplace. They
smiled at us. "Welcome," the girl said.

"Get a load of that," Kinsey said.

We dropped our stuff in a corner and the people made
room for us by the fireplace. D'Crenzo spoke to them in
Italian, while Kinsey and I concentrated on getting warm
and eying the girl.

"This is the mayor's family," D'Crenzo said to us. "Wife,
daughter, and father. This other character is a cousin."

"I am medical student," the young man in knickers said
in English. "I am continuing to Napoli for my studies."

"What's the name of the tomato?" Kinsey said.

D'Crenzo said, "Inez," and the girl smiled at us.

"That's for me," Kinsey said.

Just then a little boy ran into the kitchen and stopped by

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die door, looking at us with wide eyes. The girl said "Ameri-
cano" and Kinsey took out a piece of C-ration candy and
tossed it to the kid. The boy caught and unwrapped it in
one motion, and popped it into his mouth. Then he smiled.
The outside door opened and Colonel Williams walked into
the kitchen, followed by Captain Llewellyn and Moose.
Llewellyn was rubbing his hands. "Don't tell me we're
going to be warm," he said. "You'd better not let Division
hear about this."

The colonel told Kinsey that the enlisted men of
the staff section would sleep on the floor of the kitchen
and the officers on the floor of the dining room. The colonel
sat down on a bench by the fireplace and took out a map.
"This is the situation," he said. The Italians all moved into
a corner and kept very quiet as the colonel talked. The
colonel explained that we were some ten miles ahead of the
rest of the Fifth Army. On our right flank were Germans,
on our left flank were Germans, and there were probably
Germans ahead of us. For all the colonel knew there might
very well be Germans behind us. To our right were just
more mountains, but directly across the mountain on our
left was a road running north. South of us on this road was
another town, which was still being battled for by the Ameri-
cans and Germans. If we were to cross the mountain and
cut that road, we could trap all the Germans still fighting
in that town. This, said the colonel, was not quite possible
at the moment, since we had no communications, no artil-
lery, no supply and very few men.

I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE

"So what are we going to do?" Kinsey asked.

"Well, we can send out patrols," the colonel said.

"We can sit," D'Crenzo said. "I could use a little sitting."

"That's about all we can do," the colonel said. He sat back
on the bench and shook his head sadly. "What a fine op-
portunity."

"Imagine being warm for a whole day," Llewellyn said.

The colonel went out again to see about the patrols. Kin-
sey whispered to D'Crenzo, who asked the girl something
in Italian. The girl laughed and pointed upstairs. Kinsey
left the room. There was a loud knock on the door and Inez
went to answer. She came back with two old men. They
spoke rapidly to D'Crenzo, making large and fierce ges-
tures as they spoke. D'Crenzo said to me, "They want to
see the colonel and report the big Fascist here. They say he's
been helping the Tedeschi" One of the old men nodded
at this last word and pulled his hand ferociously across his
throat. "He says this bird was head of the local Blackshirts,"
D'Crenzo said. He spoke politely to the old men, then
ushered them to the door. Kinsey came down, looking very
pleased. "They got a real one here," he said. "You can even
sit down on it."

"You don't say?" Moose said. He left the room and I
heard his feet on the stairs.

"They even got sheets on the beds," Kinsey said. "What
do you think of that?"

We spent the rest of the morning just sitting around, rel-
ishing the unaccustomed warmth. Lieutenant Jones, the

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battalion intelligence officer, wandered in and D'Crenzo
told him what the two old men had reported. Jones nodded
wearily and said he'd take a look. I sat on the bench with
Llewellyn and Kinsey, while D'Crenzo talked with the
Italians. We had our shoes oil and were toasting our feet.
Llewellyn talked about his college days at the University
of Florida and what a fine bunch the Phi Eps were. Kinsey
didn't say much; he seemed overwhelmed at being in a
house that had both a sit-down toilet and sheets on the bed.
After a while D'Crenzo came over and sat with us. He said
the Germans had taken fifteen hostages before they left,
because an Italian had killed a German soldier for looting.
They had kept the hostages two weeks and then hanged
six of them. One of the six was the mayor and they had
left him hanging for several days as a lesson to the town.

In the afternoon I took a walk around the edge of the
mountain and found Kramer and the Southern boy in a
foxhole. The Southern boy had a harmonica and was playing
while Kramer sang to the tune of / Love Mountain Music:

rel love mountain warfare
I love mountain warfare
Warred by a real hillbilly band."

They had just come back from patrol. "The krauts are
evacuating the hell out of that town back thefe," Kramer
said. "If we had anything at all we could cream them." The
clouds were still so heavy that you could not see the sur-

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rounding mountains. The clouds had changed color from
white to black, and it looked as if it would rain. Most of
the men had tried to dig their holes into the side of the
mountain, since the ground was too rocky to dig well. They
huddled there now, some with shelter halves over their holes
and some with rocks piled around the entrance to keep out
the wind. Kramer asked where I was sleeping that night
and shook his head when I told him. "The lap of luxury,"
he said. "The god-damned lap of luxury."

We slept that night on the kitchen floor. It was stone, but
it was dry. We kept the fire going all night. I lay on my side
and stared into the fire until I couldn't keep my eyes open.
The last thing I remember was Kinsey heaving a deep sigh
and saying, "All we need now is a box of marshmallows."

It was raining when we awoke. Inez and her mother came
down and heated water for coffee. Kinsey made a couple
of tentative passes at Inez, but she wouldn't play. "I'm prob-
ably too tired to do anything, anyway," Kinsey said. It
rained the whole day, and all we did was sit by the fire and
talk. Every so often a company runner would come to re-
port to the colonel; he would stand in the doorway, rain
pouring ofT his helmet, eying the fire. The mayor's father
came down in the afternoon, and of course it turned out
that he had lived in the States. "I was a big a bootlegger in
Rochester, New York," he kept saying. He was very proud
that he had survived three gang wars and returned to Italy
with a lot of money. He kept giving us hints on how to
tell bathtub gin from the real stuff, until D'Crenzo took

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him aside and told him that prohibition was a thing of the
past in the U. S.

The medics set up an aid station in a stable across the
way, and there was a steady stream of men on sick call.
Kinsey was busy altering his roster all day, muttering, "If
the krauts only knew. If they only knew." The colonel kept
sending out patrols, but they never met anything. The
colonel's temper got shorter as the day wore on. The patrols
would come back with reports of Germans evacuating up
the road and the colonel would roar, "Where the hell are
my god-damned communications?" It rained all night, too,
but stopped by morning. The sick call was even longer this
day. Lieutenant Jones came in early, followed by the two
old Italians who had reported the Fascist. Jones said he had
just searched the man's house, but hadn't found any evi-
dence that he had helped the Germans.

"Well, was he a Fascist?" D'Crenzo asked.

"Yeah, I guess so," Jones said. "There were some papers
that said he was the boss Blackshirt in this district."

I asked Jones if that weren't enough and he said he didn't
think so. "Hell," he said. "Just being a Fascist doesn't prove
anything. If we're going to make this a democratic country
we got to let them be anything they want."

D'Crenzo tried to explain this to the old men, but they
didn't seem to understand. They kept shaking their heads
and trying to butt in. Finally D'Crenzo shouted very loudly
and they shut up. D'Crenzo then spoke to them in a low
and polite tone, took their arms and ushered them out. He

I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE

came back wiping his forehead. "They think we're crazy,"
he said.

Later that afternoon a patrol returned with the news that
the Germans were no longer evacuating up the road. "Well,
I guess we'll just have to chase them some more," Kinsey
said.

"We could have trapped them," the colonel said. "We
could have trapped them like rats in a trap." He seemed
very unhappy at the thought of letting the Germans get
away. He took out his map and was showing us how we
could have trapped them when there was a knock on the
door and a lieutenant and two enlisted men walked in.
They were soaked to the skin and dripping with mud.

"Who the hell are you?" the colonel said.

"Regimental wire team, sir," the lieutenant said. "We've
got you a wire to regiment if you want it."

"Want it!" the colonel said. "What the hell took you so
long?"

"Well, these mountains," the lieutenant said.

"Oh, nuts," the colonel said. "If you got over them today,
you could have got over them yesterday." He shook his head
disgustedly. "Well, where is the god-damned wire?"

The wire team strung the wire into the dining room and
the colonel finally got in touch with Regiment. We sat
in the kitchen, eating a pizza that Inez and her mother had
made. There wasn't much on it, but it tasted good. We
talked about how terrible it was to be away from home for
two or even three years. We were well into the subject when

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

one of the outposts brought in a British captain and a Tommy.
They were also soaked; the captain went into the dining
room to talk to the colonel and the soldier sat around the
fire with us. He seemed very young and didn't talk at all,
just listened to us. Finally Kinsey asked him how long he
had been overseas and the Tommy said quietly, "Six years."
After that we talked about cities we had visited.

The British captain was with the colonel about fifteen
minutes; then they both came out and shook hands and
said "Cheerio" and the Englishmen left. The colonel came
into the kitchen and said, "Well, our flanks are protected
now. We can move out tomorrow." He said the British
had moved up on our right and the Americans up that road
to our left.

"Where are we going?" Kinsey asked.

"Are you kidding?" the colonel said.

We got up very early the next morning and rolled our
packs. Inez and her mother came out and waved to us when
we left. "You know," Kinsey said, "two more days and I
would have had that broad eating out of my hand." We
walked out to the edge of the village, where the battalion
had assembled. The men were standing silently. There
seemed to be fewer than before. I looked for Kramer, but
couldn't find him. As we were lining up, we heard the low,
rising sound of a shell. Everyone ducked, and the shell hit
behind and to the right of the village. "Oh, Jesus," some-
body said, and then another shell came over and hit in the
same place.

136

I LOVE MOUNTAIN WARFARE

"Well, they know we're here," Kinsey said.

The colonel came up from the village and moved out
immediately. The rest of the battalion followed, straggling
over the edge of the mountain and down the cloudy slope.
Another shell came over and somebody screamed back in the
village.

"You mean we were here," D'Crenzo said.

— January 1944.

X. SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

•HE

I HE ATTACK was to jump off at nine in the morning.
The objective of my infantry regiment was a long, steep
ridge that stood like a door at the head of the valley we
occupied. The pattern of attack was familiar and orthodox:
first an hour of dive-bombing to soften the objective, then
a half hour of artillery, and finally the infantry to do the
dirty work. It was a pattern that had been followed ever
since we had landed in Italy. Everyone was getting tired of
it. Our regiment had fought through Sicily and all the way
up from Salerno, and the men were particularly tired of
walking. They were not tired of fighting, if fighting meant
that they would get home sooner, but they were very weary
of long night marches and then hours of fancy mountain
climbing in the face of enemy fire. This struck them as a
hell of a way to fight a war that was supposed to be so
mechanized and motorized, and they frequently said so. My
job in this operation was going to be with the headquarters
of one of the attacking battalions. I was now with regi-
mental headquarters, which was in a one-room farmhouse
by the side of a dirt road, and the plan was for me to join
the battalion as it marched past the regimental command

SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

post during the night on its way to the jump-off point. The
battalion was scheduled to come by at two in the morning,
and someone was supposed to wake me. No one did. When
the guard was changed at midnight, the old guard forgot to
tell the new guard. At four-thirty the regimental C.P. moved
out, leaving me behind. I was asleep in a haystack and they
could have moved the whole Fifth Army without my hear-
ing them. A horse nibbling at the hay was what finally woke
me. It was six o'clock.

There was no one around the place when I slid out of the
hay, and the road was deserted. It was just getting light.
Fog lay like chalk over the valley, twisting at the bottom as
it began to rise. The air was cold and damp. The only living
thing in sight seemed to be the horse, and he was no bargain.
I dressed, put on my helmet and pistol belt, then went up to
the farmhouse and looked in. There was nothing inside but
guttered candles, torn and empty K-ration boxes, and piles
of straw on which the officers had slept. I returned to the
haystack and made up my bedding roll. Most of the line
troops carried only a raincoat and half a blanket. At night
they wrapped the half blanket around their head and
shoulders, put the raincoat over that, and lay on the ground.

I had a whole blanket and a shelter half, a combination

•.' ^
which, by comparison, was equal to an inner spring mattress.

After making up the roll, I ate a bar of K-ration chocolate.
As the fog lifted, it revealed the mountains along the valley.
At the end of the valley was the ridge we were going to take,
looming black and forbidding through the mist. I finished

139

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

the chocolate, slung the bedding roll over one shoulder, and
started along the road toward the front.

There was no activity at all on the road, which seemed
strange, considering that an attack was coming off. The
valley was completely quiet. There were not even the ordi-
nary morning-in-the-country noises. I walked for about a
mile without seeing anyone and then passed an artillery
battery dug in beside the road. The guns were camouflaged
with nets. The men sat beside them, eating out of C-ration
cans. No one looked up as I passed. Ahead of me, growing
larger, was the high ridge. Before it were a few small hills.
Between these hills and the ridge was another, smaller val-
ley, running at right angles to the one I was following. Our
men would have to cross it under fire. It was seven o'clock
now, and there was still no sound of gunfire.

I had gone half a mile past the artillery when I heard a
car behind me. A jeep was coming up the road. It stopped
when I thumbed it. A colonel was sitting next to the driver,
and he said, "Hop in." I climbed into the back and sat on
my bedding roll. "We're going to the regimental C.P.," the
colonel said. That suited me; I could find out there where
my battalion was. The colonel must have been important,
because the driver, a staff sergeant, drove very carefully, as
if he were driving a sedan instead of a jeep. The road was
full of holes, and he actually went into second for some of
them, which is a rare thing to do with a jeep. I kept my eye
out for planes. The ceiling was still very low, but you never

140

SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

could tell. The road curved to the right, when we came to
the first o£ the little hills, and then headed straight for the
ridge. The colonel told the driver to slow down. We caught
up to a young lieutenant walking along the road, and the
colonel leaned out and asked him where the regimental
C.P. was. "Damned if I know," the lieutenant said. He
needed a shave and looked tired.

"Well, what outfit are you?" the colonel asked.

"Support battalion," the lieutenant said. He turned oflf the
road and started across a field toward some vehicles parked
under a tree. The colonel looked as though he were going to
call him back, but finally he ordered the driver to go ahead.
A hundred yards beyond, we came to a crossroads, and there
was an M.P. here. The colonel shouted his question about
the regimental C.P. at him and the M.P. waved us to the
left. We took the road he had indicated, but it soon turned
into a cow path and finally petered out altogether in front of
an old farmhouse. Another M.P. was standing there, scratch-
ing his head. We stopped beside him and the colonel asked
directions again. The M.P. scratched his head, but he
pointed across a field to a wooded hill. The driver started
off again. The M.P. called, "Hey!" We stopped, and the
M.P. said mildly, "You better be careful crossing that field.
It's supposed to be mined." None of us said anything for
a moment; then the colonel sighed and told the driver to go
ahead.

The driver went slowly across the field, following what
he probably hoped were wheel tracks. I shifted around so

141

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

that I was sitting on the side of the jeep with my feet on the
back seat. I wondered briefly whether I shouldn't sit on my
helmet, but decided that it wasn't really necessary. We didn't
hit any mines, but we thought about them and it seemed like
a long time before we got across that field. There was a dirt
road on the other side and we followed it as we ascended
the hill. Half-way up the hill we reached the C.P., which
was in a grove of trees. I saw the regimental commander
and his executive officer standing in a large excavation; the
C.O. was talking over a telephone. The drivers and other
headquarters-company men were digging foxholes and put-
ting up a blackout tent. We parked under a tree. I thanked
the colonel for the lift and went of! to see if I could find some-
one I knew. I finally found Vrana. He was sitting in a ditch
by the side of the road, fooling around with a hand radio. I
asked him where the battle was and he said it hadn't started
yet. "We got observation on top of this hill," he said. "I was
just talking to them. They said they couldn't see a damned
thing/* Vrana thought that the best way to find the battalion
was to go up to the observation post and try to spot it from
there. I could climb to the crest of the hill and walk along
it until I found the post. He thought it was safe. He said that
there had been only a little shelling, and that the enemy had
settled down to throwing one shell into the C.P. every twenty
minutes. "But on the nose," Vrana said. "You can set your
watch by those bastards."

I said good-by and started up the hill. It was easy climbing
and I got to the top without much trouble. I came across a

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SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

telephone wire there and followed it along the crest. The hill
dipped into a saddle. I went down into it and was halfway up
the other side when I heard the sound of men descending
above me. They turned out to be two infantrymen, looking
very dirty and completely bushed. One carried a rifle and the
other had the base plate of a mortar. The riflemen said
wearily, "How do you get out of this damned place ? " I told
them to follow the wire.

"You know where C Company is?" the mortar man asked
me.

I asked him what outfit.

"Second battalion," he said.

"We just got relieved," the rifleman said. "Only nobody
knows where we're supposed to go."

"I ain't even sure we been relieved," the mortar man said

"I'm sure," the rifleman said. "The lieutenant come by
and said we were relieved. That's good enough for me."

"The lieutenant got killed," the other man said.

"So what?" the rifleman said. "He relieved us before he
got killed."

I said that I didn't know where C Company was but
that they could probably find out at the C.P., and then it
developed that they weren't even from our regiment. Their
outfit had been in the line for eight days, and had held the
hill we were on against four counterattacks; they had been
spread all over the place and when our regiment had moved
through, the night before, they had got mixed up. Now all
they wanted was some hot chow and a place to sleep for a

M3

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

few days. Finally they decided to go down to the C.P., and
moved off, cursing with the mechanical passion that every-
one picks up in the Army.

I continued to follow the wire. It led up the slope to the
top of the hill, which I suddenly realized was now flat and
grassy. I felt very conspicuous. I ducked low and was creep-
ing along beside the wire when a voice called my name. In
a hollow between some rocks were three members of our
regiment's intelligence platoon. The man who had called
me was Caruso. I crawled down to them. They said that
they were the observation post. The two others were a lieu-
tenant named Bixby and a private named Rich. You couldn't
see anything from the hollow, but they said it was more
comfortable there. "It's also healthier," Caruso explained,
A.t that moment we heard the whine of a shell, growing
steadily louder, and then a great swish, as though someone
were cutting the tops of the trees with a giant scythe.

"See what I mean?" Caruso said.

"They throw one like that every twenty minutes," Lieu-
tenant Bixby said. "You can set a clock by it."

I said I had heard about that before; the shells were land-
ing below, in the C.P.

Caruso laughed. "I bet they're sweating down there," he
said.

The fact that the shells were aimed at the C.P. and not at
them seemed to make them happy. Caruso reached behind
a rock and drew out a cardboard box full of rations. "How
about something to eat?" he said.

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SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

"You just finished breakfast/' Rich said.

"I got something better to do?" Caruso asked. He rum-
maged around in the box and came up with a can of meat
baFs and spaghetti. Fie opened it with a trench knife and
ate the whole can, using the knife as a spoon.

While Caruso was eating, the lieutenait kept looking at
his watch. Finally he said, "Listen." Very far away there
was the faint cough of a gun, and then a rising whine and a
sudden heavy rush of air as another shell passed over our
heads. "See?" the lieutenant said, looking very pleased with
himself. "Twenty minutes on the nose."

When Caruso had finished his meal, we climbed out of
the hollow and up to the crest of the hill, where we lay on
-our stomachs, looking across the smaller valley toward the
ridge. The lieutenant had a pair of field glasses. He looked
through them and said, "There's fighting on the side of the
ridge." He handed me the glasses. Through them I could
see faint pufTs of smoke half-way up the ridge and move-
ment among the trees and rocks. "That's for me," I said.
I was greatly tempted just to stay at the observation post.
Sitting in the hollow was safe and secret, and no shell in the
world would find me there. The air was getting warmer
and the grass was soft and only a little wet. I could sleep.
But I had to find the battalion, so I stood up, shouldered my
roll, said good-by, and started off again.

Lieutenant Bixby had said to follow the wire, which he
thought led to the ridge. There was not even a suggestion

M5

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

of a path, and if you didn't know regimental wire teams
you wouldn't think the wire could possibly lead anywhere.
Finally, half-way down the hill, the wire brought me onto
a muddy path that ran diagonally down the hill. The path
was screened by trees and seemed insulated from the rest
of the world. The air was cold down there. The only sound
was the squish of my shoes in the mud, and even that was
a cold, clammy sound. It was easy going, but there was noth-
ing pleasant about it. It was like walking in a cold jungle.
But I soon lost myself in the rhythm of walking. It wasn't
until I was almost at the foot of the hill that I discovered
that I had also lost the wire. I walked back a few yards, then
decided that it wasn't worth going all the way back up the
hill. I had no idea where the path led, but if the fighting was
half-way up the ridge the valley was probably safe. If it
wasn't safe, I was just out of luck. I started to descend again,
only slower. It was very quiet. The path straightened out
near the bottom of the hill and the trees became sparser.
Then it dipped suddenly and I began to walk fast.

The path turned abruptly. Ahead of me was a group of
men. I went for the ground, but they were Americans. There
were four of them, carrying a blanket stretched out between
them. Lying on the blanket was another soldier. His feet were
drawn up and his face was buried in his arms. He lay very
still. The men came slowly toward me, carrying the blanket
with great care. They all had rifles slung over their shoulders;
their faces were drawn and their eyes were deep in their
sockets. They stopped when they reached me and one of the

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SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

two front men said, "You know where the medics are?" His
voice was too tired to have any expression; it seemed to come
from a great distance. I said I didn't know. "We got to find
the medics," the soldier said. "We got a man hurt bad." I
said they would have to climb the hill and then maybe they
could send down from the observation post for one of the
first-aid men at the C.P. The soldier was silent for a while,
then he said again, "We got to find the medics." The three
other men stood silent, looking at the one who was talking.
The blanket was stiff with caked blood. The wounded man
was scarcely breathing. Once in a while his fingers twitched
and tapped weakly on the blanket. I said that they would
pick up a wire further along and that it would take them
to the observation post. "Thank you," the man who had
spoken to me said. He shifted his feet, moving very gently
so as not to disturb the wounded man. "All right," he said
to the others. "Left foot." They began to walk again, syn-
chronizing their steps so that they wouldn't shake the blan-
ket. As they passed, I stepped aside, but not quickly enough
to avoid brushing against one of the rear men. He said,
"Excuse me." They moved up the path slowly, like sleep-
walkers, and I watched until they turned the corner and
were out of sight. Then I went on along the path, following
the tiny trail of blood they had left.

The path broadened at the foot of the hill and before I
knew it I was in the valley. It was wider than I had thought,
looking at it from above; the ridge seemed a couple of miles
away. The path ended at a dirt road running through the

M7

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

valley, but I decided to cut straight across and head for the
ridge. The ground was soft and grassy; it felt good to be
walking on the level. There was a lovely tranquillity in
the valley, and the ridge was quiet again. I had walked
about two hundred yards from the foot of the hill when
there was a rush of air and a clap of thunder, and I fell flat
on my face. When the ground had settled down, I lifted my
head and looked around. A thin cloud of smoke and dust
hung peacefully in the air a hundred feet to my left. There
was nothing else to be seen. I lay there until I began to feel a
little foolish, then stood up and began walking toward the
ridge again. This time I got about twenty yards before there
was the flat wham of something going very fast and another
thunder clap. This time the smoke was closer. Then, while
I was still lying on the ground, another shell hit only thirty
feet away, throwing dirt all over the place. I stood up, bent
low, and ran like hell. Another shell landed somewhere be-
hind me, but I didn't stop until I got back to the foot of the
hill. The first thing I saw was a ditch, and I hopped into
that. It was full of water, but it was deep. It could have been
full of hydrochloric acid as long as it was deep.

I lay in the ditch perhaps twenty minutes. There was no
more shelling. The echoes still rang in my ears, but the
valley was quiet again. Finally I climbed out of the ditch
and started along the base of the hill, keeping under cover
as much as I could. The road through the valley curved to-
ward me, and I found myself walking on it. I went slowly,
trying to look all around me at once. My clothes were wet

SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

and I began to shiver. The valley was deathly quiet. I
couldn't stop shivering, and then I felt afraid. I wasn't afraid
of snipers, or even of mines, which can irritate you so much
that eventually you say the hell with them, just to be able
to walk freely and with dignity again. But there is some-
thing about heavy artillery that is inhuman and terribly
frightening. You never know whether you are running away
from it or into it. It is like the finger of God. I felt cowardly
and small at the base of this tremendous hill, walking alone
on the floor of this enormous valley. I felt like a fly about to
be swatted. It was a lousy feeling. I was very angry until I
realized that there was nothing I could do about it. Then
T began to wish I were somewhere else.

The road hugged the base of the hill and then swung out
into the valley again. I stayed on it, partly from inertia and
partly to assert myself. All of a sudden I heard an automobile
horn. I looked up and down the road, but nothing was in
sight. The horn blew again. It was a nice, raucous city horn;
I thought I was imagining things. The horn blew again and
a voice called out, "You dumb son of a bitch, where do you
think you're going?" The voice came from the hill. I looked
over and saw a soldier standing above me near some bushes,
waving. "Come back here!" he yelled. "You want your god-
damn head blown off?" I started toward him. I had almost
reached him when he yelled "Run!" and jumped in among
the bushes. I started to run, and then there was the whistle
of a shell and a loud crack and a piece of the hill flew into

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the air. I hit the ground, digging with my nose, and the
soldier stuck his head out of the bushes and yelled, "Here!
In here!" I got up and ran toward him and he pulled me
through the bushes. There was a shallow cleft in the hill,
hidden by foliage, and parked in the cleft was a jeep. In the
jeep was another soldier and on the back was a reel of tele-
phone wire. "I hope you got insurance," the soldier in the
jeep said, "because the way you travel around this country
you're sure going to need it." As soon as I got my breath,
I asked him what he meant, and the first soldier took me
by the arm and pulled me back to the bushes. He held them
apart and asked me what I saw. I couldn't see anything.
"Over there by the foot of the ridge," he said. I looked again.
"You see it?" he said. I saw it. A German tank was sitting
in a field below the ridge. It was far away, but you could
see that it was a heavy tank and you could see the black cross
on the side. "Get a load of that kraut bastard," the soldier
said. "He nearly blew us of! the road."

We went back to the jeep and he explained that they and
another man had come around the other side of the hill
along a wide trail, stringing wire for the battalion, and the
tank had opened fire, forcing them to take cover in the
cleft. The tank was apparently afraid to come down into
the valley, since we had covering fire on it, but it would fire
on anything that moved. The one who had yelled to me was
short and red-faced; his name was Jenkins. The other was
tall, with a long, sad face and huge hands, and Jenkins
called him Tex. "He really comes from Oklahoma," Jenkins

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SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

said, "but he served two years at Fort Sam Houston, so
everyone calls him Tex." I asked if they had done anything
about the tank. Jenkins said they had sent the third man up
to the artillery observation post to put some* fire on it. He
said we had men working their way up the ridge; he didn't
think they were meeting much opposition, since all the firing
he had heard had been light and sporadic. There seemed to
be nothing to do but wait, so I sat down in the jeep and
relaxed. The two other men went into what was apparently
a running argument about the relative attractions of French
women in Algiers and Italian women in Italy. Jenkins was
upholding the French.

"They got more class," he kept saying to Tex.

"Maybe so," Tex said, "but what good is it if you can't get
anywhere?"

"That's just what I mean," Jenkins said triumphantly.
"That's class."

Just then there was the crackle of a shell overhead. "That's
it," Jenkins said. He rushed to the bushes and held them
apart so that he could look across the valley. Tex and I
followed him. "It's our god-damn artillery," Tex said. "They
finally realized there's a war on." The shell had hit a hun-
dred yards or so from the tank. The tank began to move,
obviously trying to retreat, but something must have been
wrong, because it turned only part way around. Another
shell landed closer, and Jenkins whispered, "You kraut bas-
tard, stay there, stay there!" The tank looked like a huge
bug, twitching as it strained to get away. Another shell came

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

over, but this one was farther off, and then two more, closer.

"How can you hit a tank from that distance ? " Tex asked.
"It'd be a miracle."

"Shut your face," Jenkins said, without looking at him.
He was whispering to the artillery, "Hit the bastard, hit him.
^ him!"

But the next shell was off the target and the two after that
were even farther off, and then the tank spun around,
wobbled for a second, and lumbered out of sight. Two more
shells went over, but it was too late. The tank was hidden
now.

"God-damn" Jenkins said, turning back to us. He looked
as if he were going to cry.

"Listen," Tex said. "Them guns have been firing since
Salerno. I bet right now they got bores as smooth as a baby's
bottom. You're lucky they get as close as two hundred yards
to what they're aiming at."

Jenkins got into the driver's seat of the jeep and started
the motor. "That tank ain't going to stick his nose out no
more," he said. "We might as well get this wire laid." Tex
went around behind the jeep, so that he could follow it and
see that the wire didn't get tangled as it was reeled out, and
I got into the front seat. We drove out through the bushes
and headed across the valley toward the ridge but bearing
away from the part of the ridge where the tank had dis-
appeared. "He ain't going to bother us," Jenkins said, "but
there ain't no sense giving him the chance." We drove across
the valley in second, Tex walking behind, paying out the

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wire. Once we heard the crackle of a shell going over. Jenkins
slammed on the brakes and we both spilled out, but the shell
kept going and we heard it hit on the other side of the ridge.
When we got to the base of the ridge, Jenkins parked the
car and said he'd be damned if he was going to lug that wire
up a mountain; he was going to wait for the man they had
sent to the artillery observation post. I offered to help them,
but he said they'd better wait for him. I said I thought I'd
be on my way then. I got my bedding roll and thanked them
for saving my life. "Hell," Tex said. "He might have missed
you." Jenkins warned me to watch out for trip wires on the
way up; while they had been pinned down by the tank,
they had heard some explosions on the ridge that sounded
like mines, and trip wires were the favorite German method
of mining a mountain. I thanked them again and started oft.

There was no path up the ridge here, so I went straight
up. It wasn't hard going at first; the ground was soft and 1
had to fight my way through bushes, but they weren't too
thick. Then the soft ground ended and rocks began. They
were big rocks, with thickets growing between them, and
I had to hop from one to another. Even this wasn't too bad,
but then the rocks ended and there was nothing but thickets,
which I had to claw my way through. They were full of
thistles, and after a few minutes my hands and face were
bleeding. Finally I stopped and looked back. The valley was
just the same, calm and green and peaceful. In the distance
I could see dust on the road, which meant that trucks were

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

moving up. Then I heard the sharp sounds of small-arms
fire above me and to the right, so I headed that way. The
sounds grew louder and distinguishable: the crack of a rifle
and the riveting-machine burst of a German machine pistol,
and then the slower, measured answer of our machine guns.
I stopped to get my breath, and when I started again my
legs felt very heavy. My pistol dragged at my side and the
bedding roll felt as heavy as a sack of flour. But as I ap-
proached the firing, I began to feel life-size. The valley fear
and sense of insignificance disappeared and I felt human,
and very important. I didn't know how close I was to the
top of the ridge, but that didn't matter now.

The ridge grew steeper; the rocks appeared again, and
then the bushes. I ripped my way through. My uniform
was soaked with sweat and my helmet bounced up and
down on my head and slid over my eyes. At last I got on a
trail which went uphill. The firing was very near now, but
it had slackened. Alongside the path, I saw, ahead of me,
three soldiers with red crosses on their arms, standing over
another soldier on the ground. They paid no attention to
me. When I got closer, I saw that two of them were work-
ing on the man on the ground, cutting away his uniform
around a lumpy brown stain on his side. The third
man was standing a little apart. He was a medical cap-
tain. I asked him where the battalion C.P. was and he
pointed up the trail without speaking. I kept on the
trail and began to encounter signs that there had been a
fight. There was a German machine-gun emplacement dug

SEARCH FOR A BATTLE

in between two trees, the gun still pointing down the moun-
tain, and two dead Germans lying beside the gun. Farther
up, cases of German ammunition were scattered around.
The trail widened. It mounted a little further and then ran
for a while along the side of the ridge, hidden from the top
by an overhanging clirT. I came upon the mouth of a cave
in the clifT. Two officers were sitting before it, looking at a
map. One was the battalion commander, a young, tough
colonel with a mustache. The other was the battalion in-
telligence officer, a child lieutenant who looked about eight-
een when he was shaved. He was one of the people I was
supposed to have gone with. When he saw me, all he said
was, "You're a little late, aren't you?" I told him what had
happened. "You missed all the fun," he said. "We've already
chased the krauts off the hill." I asked what the shooting
was, and he said it was just some isolated snipers the boys
were cleaning up. "You can go on up to the top of the hill
if you want," he said. "Just keep your head down."

I said I'd take a quick look and continued up the trail.
There were infantrymen scattered along it, opening pack-
ages of K ration or sleeping or just sitting and smoking.
None of them were talking. There were also several men
lying on the ground with blankets over their faces. The
path grew steeper and then dribbled out among some rocks.
I started to climb up over the rocks and a voice said, "Keep
your head down." A soldier was sitting behind a large rock
at the top. I kept low and climbed up to him. "This is the
end of the line," he said. "Unless you want your head handed

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to you." I dropped my bedding roll, climbed the rock, and
looked over.

Everything was exactly the same. There was the other
side of the ridge dropping off beneath me and at the bot-
tom was a green little valley, and then another ridge. Be-
yond that were more ridges, rising and falling in the same
pattern. There seemed to be no end; it was like being in
an airplane over a sea of clouds that stretched forever into
space. It was very quiet on top of the ridge. There was no
more firing and the air was warm and motionless. Then
there was the sound of planes and two of our dive-bombers
appeared, flying very high and fast, heading for the next
ridge. When they were over it, they gunned their motors
and then heeled over and went down with terrible direct-
ness in a long, plummeting dive, the motor sound lost in
the screaming of the wings; and when it seemed that they
would never pull out, they pulled out, and from the bottom
of the planes, like droppings from a bird, the bombs fell
beautifully down and hit and exploded. Then the planes
flattened out and climbed and sped swiftly back toward
their field.

I lay there for a while longer and then climbed down to
the soldier behind the rock. "How does it look?" he asked.

"It looks familiar," I said.

— February 1944.

I56

XL WALK THROUGH
YUGOSLAVIA

1. ROAD CROSSING

I HE

'HERE WERE two ways of getting into Yugoslavia when
I visited that country early this year as a correspondent for
Yan/(. The first was by parachute and the second was by
walking. I walked. I walked for seven days, from the Adri-
atic coast to the headquarters of Marshal Tito, most of the
time over mountains and about half the time through Ger-
man-occupied territory. The front in Yugoslavia then was
unlike any front in the world, except possibly that of the
Chinese guerrillas. It was composed of large chunks of lib-
erated territory that the Partisans had carved out of the
nominally German-held country. There was no such thing
as a line, with Partisans on one side and Fascists on the
other; the Partisans fought out from all around the edges
of these liberated areas, frequently almost back to back. Tito's
headquarters were in the middle of one of these liberated
areas. It was necessary to cross German-occupied areas in
order to reach them from the coast. This was often not as
difficult as it may sound. The Germans controlled the cities
and large towns and main roads, but stuck very closely to
these. By keeping to back trails and traveling by night, it

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was possible to walk for some time through German terri-
tory and not meet any Germans, or at least not many Ger-
mans.

I was conducted into Yugoslavia by the Partisans. Their
official title is The National Army of Liberation and Partisan
Detachments of Yugoslavia, and they are composed of anyone
who wants to fight the Fascists, regardless of age, sex, religion
or political coloration. I traveled with a group of fifty dele-
gates going to a youth congress to be held at headquarters.
It was the second congress of an anti-Fascist youth organiza-
tion that included most Partisan youth between seven and
twenty-five; this meant most non-collaborationist Yugoslav
youth. The duties of this organization, besides the normal
combatant duties, were generally to organize and inform the
youth on the war. They also formed agricultural brigades to
work the land and held literacy classes for children and adults.
The first congress had been in December of 1942, and now
the delegates were returning to report on what their groups
had done in the intervening year and a half. The delegates I
traveled with were from Dalmatia, which is the coastal part
of Yugoslavia along the Adriatic. They had been granted
leaves of absence from their units to attend the congress.
Also in the group were several older soldiers, including four
middle-aged men who were being transferred to different
outfits, and six young girls who had just finished training as
nurses and were being assigned to various combat units. It
struck me at first that this was rather an unwieldy group to
sneak through occupied territory, but the Partisans said you

WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

had to travel either with a big group or just a few. Otherwise
the Germans would lay for you. Two or three men might
not be noticed, while a group of fifty Partisans, armed with
rifles and tommy guns, could handle up to three or four
hundred Germans. All of our group were armed, including
the nurses.

We traveled across the Adriatic at night in an ex-fishing
smack that the Partisans had stiffened with machine guns
and christened a gunboat. The entire Dalmatian coast at that
time was German-occupied, but we were to make contact
with a guerrilla detachment coming down to meet and
escort us back into the hills. The ex-fishing smack didn't look
very rakish, but it moved swiftly and quietly, which was a
prerequisite for operating in those waters. The previous night
it had captured a German schooner running supplies to gar-
risons along the coast, and two nights before that it had sunk
another schooner. The boat had no provisions for passengers,
but there was a hold for fish and most of our party went in
that. The rest of us sat on deck. I sat forward with a very tall,
lean Partisan boy named George, who spoke fairly good Eng-
lish and acted as my interpreter. George had been a university
student in the Dalmatian city of Split. He had stayed for a
while after the Italian Fascists had arrived and then had gone
into the mountains and joined the Partisans. Also up front
with us was the leader of the group, a young major named
Peter. He was dark, handsome and ingenuous, and had been
wounded six times in two and a half years. Before the war he
had been a bank clerk; it was hard to realize this because he

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was such a perfect soldier. The three of us lay on deck near
one of the machine guns, looking up at the sky. It was a nice
night, not too cold, the air clean and fresh and salty. There
was no moon, but the sky was dizzy with stars. A light fog
hung on the water, evaporating as we came up to it, and it
made an effective screen for our movements. The boat knifed
its way smoothly through the calm sea. Most of the people
on deck were trying to sleep, since we would be walking all
night, but I was too restless. Once someone thought he saw
a light. The word passed around and some of the crew went
quietly to their guns, but nothing happened. I was trying to
see through the darkness when one of the crew came up and
tapped me on the shoulder. "You the American?" he asked
in English.

I said yes, and he slapped me heavily on the back. "Pleased
to meet you," he said. "I lived in New York City five years."
I said I was pleased to meet him; this had happened in too
many places for me to wonder any more at people who had
lived in New York. I just hoped he hadn't lived in Brooklyn.
We shook hands and he sat down beside me. I couldn't see
his face very well. He spoke with a Slavic accent, but it was
obvious he had lived in New York. "I worked three years in
Sherman's Cafeteria," he said immediately. "You ever eat
in Sherman's Cafeteria ? It's in the Bronx." I said I hadn't and
he shook his head. "A fine place," he said. "I worked busboy,
salad man, counterman, everything. Then I come back here
with a little money and before I know it the war breaks out.
What do you think of that?"

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WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

I said it was a shame and then he asked me where I was
going. I said to Tito's headquarters. "Fine man, Tito," he said.
"Like George Washington." I asked if any other crew mem-
bers had been to America and he said he was the only one.
Then he said the crew wasn't too happy about this job of
transporting us across. "It's a whole wasted night," he said.
"We coulda been rubbing out one of those German ships."
I said one night shouldn't make too much difference, but he
said, "You don't know these guys. One night without chasing
these Fascist bastards is like whole year to you and me. That's
all they think about." He stood up and slapped me on the
back again. "Well, I got to go work," he said. "You sure there
ain't nothing I can do for you ? You hungry ? Want something
to eat?"

"No, thanks," I said.

"Well, just let me know," he said. "Anything at all."

He went off toward the stern and I settled down to watch
the water. It was getting cold. I wore a reversible parka that
had been issued to troops in Italy, and I pulled the hood over
my head. Then I saw a light. It was directly ahead and it
went out as I watched. Then it went on again. George and
Peter were also watching, but the men at the machine guns
didn't seem particularly interested. George spoke to one of
them and then said to me, "It's our signal." The light blinked
twice again and then our motors were cut and everything was
suddenly quiet and we began to drift noiselessly in to shore.
There was only the light blinking at first, and then gradually
the shore came into view. It seemed all cliff, rising sheer out

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of the sea. I wondered where we were going to land. The
boat moved very slowly. It nosed between two large rocks
and I saw a tiny stretch of beach. The crew were preparing
ropes to throw to shore. Peter stood up and went back to see
if everyone was ready. George and I also stood up. We were
eacli carrying rucksacks and we helped each other with the
straps. George also had a rifle, while I had only a pistol. We
stood at the bow, and as the boat slid toward shore we could
see dark figures standing on the beach. The men at the ma-
chine guns were interested now. They had the forward guns
trained on the beach. The other guns covered the cliff. The
boat moved very softly. It nosed between two large rocks and
came gently to rest in shallow water, about ten yards from
shore. One of the crew leaned over the side and called softly
to the figures on the beach. A voice answered. I asked George
what had been said. "They are friends," George said.

The crew now began throwing the rope to the people on
shore. A long, wide strip of wood was pushed out from the
beach, resting on the side of the boat to make a gangplank.
"Come on," George said. The rest of our group was climbing
out of the hold. Peter was up front again. "Swiftly, swiftly,"
he was whispering in Serbian. I stepped up on the rail, bal-
anced myself, stepped from there onto the plank, and half
walked, half slid down. George followed me. There were
three men and one woman on the beach. It was too dark to see
what any of them looked like. George and I stood there, not
knowing what to do, and then Peter came down, spoke
briefly to the other people, and immediately started up the

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cliff. "Come on," George said again. He started after Peter
and I followed him. There was a steep path going up the
cliff. I looked back and saw the rest of our group sliding down
the plank and following us. It was very dark and quiet, the
boat a black shifting mass on the water. About half-way up
the cliff we began to pass other dark figures, seated on rocks
along the path. I figured they must be part of our bodyguard.
They watched us as we passed, but didn't say anything.
Peter stopped once, further up, to see that everyone was in
line, then continued. His pace wasn't fast, but it was steady
and tiring. No one spoke. Finally we got to the top of the
cliff and Peter stopped. There was a group of men there,
waiting for us, and Peter conferred with them. George and
I tried to see what was ahead, but it was too dark to see
clearly. The cliff became a gentle slope on this side, apparently
heading down into a broad valley. Far to our left a signal
light went off and on with steady regularity. "That is a Ger-
man garrison," George said. I asked how far it was and he
shrugged. "Five miles, maybe six." While we stood there, a
Partisan leading a couple of mules came over the brow of
the cliff and started down toward the boat. George spoke to
him and the man answered shortly. "He says it's five miles,"
George said to me, "but if you take the short cut it is only
four and a half."

We stayed at the top of the cliff for a few minutes longer,
then Peter started again. It was much pleasanter going
downhill. We passed other men, standing by the side of the
path, leaning on rifles. Once a flare shot into the air some

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

distance to the right, lighting up the sky. No one paid any
attention. "These Fascists get frightened at night," George
said. "Whenever they hear the wind whistle they shoot off a
flare." The path had widened now, so it was possible to walk
two abreast. The path wound down the hill, through a pas-
ture, past a burnt farmhouse, and onto a wide dirt road.
More men were standing here, but Peter didn't stop. The
men watched us silently as we passed. It was no longer pos-
sible to see the German garrison light. I wondered vaguely if
we were heading toward or away from it. We passed other
farmhouses squatting by the side of the road, gleaming
whitely in the dark. There seemed to be nothing wrong with
them until you came close and saw that they had no roofs.
We must have walked about an hour when Peter stopped.
George immediately sat down. "We rest here," he said. I lay
down beside him, resting my head on the blanket I had tied
around the edge of my rucksack. The others were stretched
out all the way down the road. Peter had disappeared some-
where, but after a few minutes he returned with a canteen of
water, which he offered to me. I drank a little and passed it
to George, who drank and passed it down the line. It was
very restful just lying there on the grass in the cool night. I
closed my eyes. George shook me and said, "Come on, come
on." Everyone else was on his feet. I got up and George asked,
"How is your pack?" I said my pack was fine. Peter came
over and said something to George, who said to me, "He
says you should give your pack to one of the mules carrying
literature for the congress." I thanked him and said I could

WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

carry my own pack. "You're sure it is not too heavy ?" George
asked. They were both very concerned. I said it wasn't too
heavy. They looked at me and then Peter laughed and
slapped me on the back, nearly knocking me into a ditch.
Then he turned and began walking again.

He walked slower this time. We didn't pass any more of
our bodyguard, but every once in a while someone ran up
from the rear of the column to speak to Peter and then ran
back again. Once someone came out of the darkness to our
right and walked with Peter for a while before going off
again. Once we stopped and just stood still for almost ten
minutes, no one talking or even breathing loud, and then we
moved forward again quietly and in a little while came to a
crossroads. It had evidently been reconnoitered before we
were allowed to pass. We crossed quickly. The night was
very black, but the countryside held a desolation that you
could feel through the blackness. The hollow houses gaped
at us; several times we passed houses that had been burnt,
only the chimney standing. Once we passed a dark mass of
hill and George said, "There was a battle here two years ago."

The road stayed flat and sandy. All I could hear as we
marched was the shuffle of feet, like running water. Peter kept
a steady pace, slower than our Army step but very regular.
My pack was getting heavy, the straps cutting into my
shoulders. I had forgotten the German garrison. I had for-
gotten everything except putting one foot in front of the
other. We stopped again for water at a well by a smashed
house. George and I both fell asleep this time and Peter had to

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

wake us up. Then I began to notice the fading night. Ahead of
us the sky was changing from black to gray. I watched it as we
walked, and the gray changed to light blue and then to pink.
The countryside was developing, first flatly and then in re-
lief, the trees coming into focus and the mountains like bad
teeth, sharp in the distance.

"This is Dalmatia," George said.

The sun was coming up. We were walking in a valley.
Across the valley was a little village, the houses small and toy-
like with red roofs. "It is good country for strafing," George
said. I looked around and up at the sky, but it was clear. The
others were also looking around. They walked with only a
hint of a line and George shook his head angrily. "They
should march like soldiers," he said. I said they fought like
soldiers. "They should march like soldiers," he said. "We are
a state now, not just a group of Partisans. They should march
like the army of a state."

They seemed to march all right to me, but I didn't
say anything. There was a village ahead of us, on the side of
a hill. Peter cut off the road before we got there and led us
across a field to a grove of pine trees at the base of a hill.
The group spread out when we came to the trees, each pick-
ing a spot. George said, "We will rest here until the sun goes
down." He led the way toward one of the trees and we both
unslung our rucksacks. I sat down under the tree and started
to take off my boots. "You had better keep them on," George
said. "We may have to leave here very quickly." I thought
about that for a minute, then decided to take them or! any-

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way. I untied my blanket and spread it on the ground. George
had taken a piece of bread from his sack and was eating. I
didn't feel very hungry, so I just rolled up in the blanket.

When I awoke the sun was directly overhead. George was
wrapped in a blanket beside me, his feet sticking out the
end. He had taken off his shoes. The others were also lying
around, some with blankets and some without them. A few
were sitting up and talking or walking around. I sat up and
began to massage my feet. They felt tender. I was doing this
when Peter came up and handed me a German messtin
filled with a thick soup. I tried to think of the Serbian word
for thank you, but couldn't remember; so I took the tin and
just smiled and nodded. Peter went away and I got a spoon
out of my pocket and began eating. There was no salt in the
soup, but it was hot. George woke up when I was half-way
through, took another German messtin out of his rucksack
and went ofl to find the food, not bothering to put on his
shoes. I finished the soup and began massaging my feet again.
George returned after a while; with him was one of the dele-
gates, a dark, bushy young man who had been known as a
Dalmatian poet before the war. I had asked the other Par-
tisans if he were a good poet and they had said yes, but that
he was sometimes too preoccupied with art. But the poet had
fought with the Partisans for three years, and everyone liked
and respected him.

The two of them sat down and George said the food had
come from the People's Committee of the village. Most Yugo-
slav villages elected such a committee to care for any Partisan

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

units passing through. This one was technically in German-
controlled territory, but that didn't make any difference.
George apologized for the inadequacy of the meal, but said
there simply wasn't much to eat. The poet added that giving
us this meal probably meant that the villagers would go
hungry themselves for a few days. The poet didn't speak
English, but he spoke French, which I could handle more
or less. He said this village was the present headquarters of
the Partisan detachment that had met us at the beach. The
detachment never stayed long at any one headquarters; they
had been here more than a week and expected a German at-
tack any day. "From now on we will travel by ourselves,"
George said. "We will be our own protection." The poet
carried a German machine pistol and he took it of! his
shoulder now and caressed it. "Peter says we will leave earlier
than sundown," George said. "We have to walk all night
and cross a road." I didn't like the way he threw in that road-
crossing business and asked him what kind of road it was.
"Oh, a main road," he said.

"There will be a battle," the poet said, cheerfully.

"It isn't so bad," George said. "I have crossed it before. It
is only that we must cross between two German-Chetnik
garrisons and sometimes there is a little trouble."

I asked how many men were in one of these garrisons and
George said, "Oh, perhaps one hundred." I didn't press him
for any further details and he didn't offer any. We spent the
rest of the afternoon washing our feet in a near-by brook and
lying in the sun and talking. Two other delegates, a young

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man named Zivko who was the official photographer for the
trip and a pretty girl named Ranka who was the secretary of
the congress, came over and sat with us. They asked a lot of
questions about America. They wanted to know how far our
free education went, whether there were still beggars in the
country, what the installment plan was, why we had sup-
ported Mikhailovitch, and what had happened to Laurel
and Hardy.

They were still asking questions and the sun was almost
down when the call went around to get ready. George and
I rolled up our blankets and helped each other into the
rucksacks. We fell into line near the back, behind Zivko and
the poet. Peter checked the line to make sure everyone was
there. When he came to me, he touched my pack and raised
his eyebrows. I told George to tell him the pack was nice and
light. Then the poet came over and said I should let the mules
carry my stuff. I got a little mad and said I could carry my
own pack. George translated this for Peter, who roared with
laughter and clouted me across the back again. Then he got
out in front and made a short speech about the necessity for
keeping liaison. He divided the party into groups of ten and
appointed a leader for each group, in case of any fighting. He
checked the line again and started oil along the same dirt
road, heading northeast.

There was enough of a chill in the air so that walking felt
good. As soon as we started walking the Partisans began to
sing. Their songs are much like the Russian songs, with a
simple, immediate quality, and they sang them beautifully.

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There was a tenor somewhere in the group who went for
all the high notes and never reached them, but otherwise it
was beautiful. I knew some of the tunes and a few of the
words, and sang along as much as I could. When there was a
lull, I started to sing some American songs. I sang the "Battle
Hymn of the Republic" and "Yankee Doodle" and "Work-
ing on the Railroad" and "Buckle Down, Winsocki" and
anything else I could think of. I even sang "America, the
Beautiful," which I hadn't sung since P.S. 161. The one they
liked best was "Working on the Railroad" and I had to teach
it to them as we marched, singing a line and then speaking it
slowly, George translating so they would know what they
were singing. It worked fine, and before long we were sing-
ing Partisan songs and "Working on the Railroad" and then
some more Partisan songs and then "Working on the Rail-
road" again. They picked up the tune well enough, but the
words sounded kind of strange.

We left the dirt road finally and cut across country. It was
getting dark fast, the valley fading out of sight, and we
headed for a row of hills. We picked up another dirt road after
a while, stayed on that for an hour and cut ofif onto a narrow
trail. The trail mounted into the hills in a gradual slope that
was the longest I had ever seen. It was full of false crests.
The night was moonless like the last, but colder. When we
stopped for a break the damp, sweaty underclothes clung like
ice against my skin. We stopped once for water out of a
mountain stream, but it was so cold that my teeth started to
chatter after I had drunk. When we began walking again I

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sang "Jingle Bells" and they liked it so much I had to teach
them that.

It wasn't until we got to the top of the hill that we saw the
flares. They were directly ahead of us, six of them, hanging
in the sky some distance ahead, blocking our path. "They
must know we're coming," George said.

"There will be a battle," the poet whispered.

We stood at the top of the hill for a minute, then started
down straight for the flares. "They are from the garrisons on
the road," George said. The flares were dying out, streaming
sadly to the ground. A machine gun rattled suddenly in the
distance.

"They get nervous at night," George said.

No one stopped or walked faster. A few people shifted their
guns around to a better position. I took out my pistol and
checked the bullet in the chamber. It was good and dark now.
A dog began to bark far away, fiercely and without pause. I
listened to the sound of a waterfall and realized it was only
our feet on the pebbly trail. The trail went down now, but
gently, so that we kept the same pace. The sound of water be-
came real and we crossed a log bridge over a little stream.
Zivko the photographer turned around and whispered to
George.

"Zivko says he was ambushed here once," George said.
Zivko said something else and George said, "But it was long
ago at the beginning of the war, and he was with only two
other men. He says it is much harder to ambush fifty."

But the flares rose again, one after the other, all six, and

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hung yellowly as if pinned to the sky. They were directly
across our path and closer. We kept on walking and they died
out. Some of the men were now carrying their guns in their
hands. "The garrisons are one kilometer apart," George said.
The flares went up again and his face appeared briefly out
of the darkness. We put our heads down. A machine gun
started to our right, sharply, without the muffler of distance.
I looked toward the sound, but couldn't see anything. The
dog stopped barking, then started again. "That god-damned
dog," I said. I could see the dim figures ahead of me, looking
around as they walked, and Peter in front, keeping the same
deliberate pace. The trail wound through trees and we were
hidden, but the yellow flare-light sifted through and picked
us out. Then Peter stopped.

There was no sound except the dog barking and then that
stopped. Peter conferred with some men at the head of the
line. They stood together, Peter talking quietly and the others
listening and nodding. Then Peter walked down the line,
peering through the darkness at each man. He picked out
fourteen delegates and six of the soldiers who were being re-
assigned, and they all went into a huddle. The rest of us
stood there. Zivko and the poet sat down, leaning against
each other's back. The minute we stopped I began to get
cold, so I walked around waving my arms to keep warm.
Peter spoke to the twenty men for several minutes. During
that time two more sets of flares went up. No one else spoke;
we waited quietly, listening to the wind blow softly through
the trees. When Peter finished, the men nodded and disap-

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pcared down the road toward the flares. Peter came over to
us, spoke to George, and went oft to speak to someone else.
George sat down against a tree and said to me, "We can rest
for a while. Nothing will happen for some time." I sat down.
The poet was lying on the ground and seemed asleep. "They
are going to create a disturbance," George said. "Ten men
to each garrison. In the middle of the disturbance we will
slip across the road." He stopped and listened to the wind.
"There is really nothing to worry about," he said. "The
Fascists will think it is an army."

I don't know how long we sat there. I think I fell asleep.
Then there was the sudden crack of rifle fire very close. Peter
ran up the line, shouting something I couldn't understand.
Everyone jumped up and he led us quickly down the road. A
flare went up and the» another, but only two. The pace was
swift now. The rifle fire was on all sides, and then it was
joined by machine pistols and machine guns. Tracers were
flying off to the right, arching nowhere in the darkness, like
fireworks. The night was full of them; I ran low, head down,
eyes on the heels of the man in front of me. The rucksack
jumped up and down on my back. The pistol banged heavily
against my thigh and I reached down and took it out of the
holster and held it in my hand. The red and orange tracers
curved prettily over our heads, not close but looking close,
as though you could reach up and catch them. The trail was
full of rocks. I tripped once, but someone gave me a hand up.
Everything was dark and blurry with movement. My feet
hit the hard familiar asphalt of a road and there was Peter in

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the middle of it, calling, "Swiftly, swiftly!" Someone was
down the road, shouting, but I couldn't hear what he said,
there was too much noise. My feet hit pebbles and then I was
running upward, away from the road, and then walking
quickly, and then less quickly, and finally normally, the
pistol still in my hand and the rucksack quiet on my back
and only my breath coming hard and painful. The shooting
was still sharp behind us, but we mounted another hill and
descended, shutting it out. There were no more flares. We
were at our old pace now. I replaced the pistol in the holster
and arranged the rucksack more comfortably. George was
ahead of me. I asked him if anyone was hurt. "I don't think
so," he said. "That was a good disturbance." Peter came up
from behind, walking to the head of the line. He smiled at
me, his teeth shining in the dark. Tke trail went along the
flat and after a while my breath came regularly again. Two
of the nurses were behind me, whispering and giggling to-
gether. I looked for Zivko and the poet and thought I saw
them ahead of George. Gradually, the memory of the road-
crossing slipped away and my mind settled into the rut of
marching. The trail broadened and went up and down a few
more hills. The mountains began to appear as the night
thinned out. We would have to cross them to get to head-
quarters.

It was light when Peter led us of? the trail into another
grove of pine trees. George said, "We will stay here for a
while." We picked a tree and dumped our stuff. I laid out my
blanket, but didn't feel sleepy. I lay there, watching the sky

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lighten, not thinking much. After a while I fell asleep. I
awoke some time in the early afternoon. The men who had
disturbed the garrisons had returned. One was wounded
slightly in the arm. They had six German rifles between them.

2. MARCH

\

THE PRINCIPAL legacy of hiking through a German-occupied

country is not excitement, but sore feet. When I tried to
put on my boots, I found my feet too swollen to get into
them. There was not even a stream in which I could bathe my
feet. All I could do was squeeze, and finally I squeezed them
into the boots. It was now midafternoon and we were ready
to march again. There was nothing to eat, since we did not
carry any rations. The only extra baggage were several ruck-
sacks filled with literature. George had a few hunks of stale
bread in his pack; he took out one of these, carefully broke it
into four pieces and handed the pieces to Zivko, the poet and
myself. Then Peter gave the order to fall into line. I landed
behind George and the poet, with Zivko behind me. Peter
started off down the dirt road heading east.

We marched all night again, but this time without incident.
We sang as we marched and talked until we became too tired
to talk. George produced another piece of bread about mid-
night, and he and the poet told stories of the early days when
they were really hungry. Even then the Partisans had an or-

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

der that no one was ever to demand food from the people.
The poet told how his unit would come to a village, not
having eaten for four days, and wait outside until the villagers
brought them food; and if no one did they went on to the
next village; and if any Partisan even picked a grape off a
vine he was immediately tried and usually punished. This
way the people learned that Partisans were different from
Germans or Chetniks, who looted as they went. Now they
feed and care for Partisan units and are paid with a note
honored by the National Army of Liberation. We talked of
hunger and how much a man needs to fight well, and the
poet told of Partisan units that have lived on half a loaf of
bread per man per day, and marched over mountains and
fought.

"It depends what you are fighting for," the poet said.

"But we need food more than anything else," George said.
"If we had enough food we could always take guns from the
Fascists."

The night passed smoothly this way, dark and beautiful,
hiding the broken country. Once we heard a plane, but
couldn't see it. The plane went away and returned : a German
plane. We could tell from the coughing sound of the motor.
The plane stayed around long enough to become part of the
night, and it was possible to walk along and look at the stars
and think of walking in New Hampshire on a night like this,
the air and the mountains the same and the plane simply a
plane. It was that kind of a night. Toward morning we saw
flares way off to our left, but they weren't anything to worry

WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

about. The sun rose while we were climbing a hill; the moun-
tains were much closer now, high and gray against the light.
Behind us were the receding hills we had already climbed.
We got to the top of the hill and looked down on a little vil-
lage. A dozen stone houses huddled together at the base of
the hill. We straggled down the hill and stopped at the out-
skirts of the village. Peter and Ranka, the girl secretary, went
into one of the houses and came out again with a very old
man and two old women. They talked together for a while
and then Peter spoke to our group and everyone began tak-
ing off his pack and setting down his gun. "We will rest
here," George said.

I dropped my pack and walked around the village by my-
self. It was a very old village. The houses were built of rocks
worn thin by age. Some of the houses had shifted and looked
as if they had been built on a slant. I saw only a few villagers,
and they were also old. They looked at me closely as I passed,
but without expression. At the end of the village was a house
apart from the others and outside of this were some younger
people, dressed in the mixture of German, Italian and British
uniforms that most Partisans in this section wore, and wear-
ing the red Partisan star on their caps. They saluted as I
passed, placing their clenched right fist alongside their temple
in the Partisan salute.

When I returned to George I asked who these people
were, and he said the house was a hospital and they were
patients. He said that near here had been one of the under-
ground hospitals the Partisans had been forced to make in

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the days before they had permanently regained any territory.
At that time they were always moving, and always on foot,
and there was a constant problem of what to do with the
wounded. At first the wounded were left to be taken prisoner
and treated by the enemy. This stopped after the Germans
slaughtered several thousand of them. So the Partisans made
underground hospitals. They dug huge caves in the ground
and put in twenty or thirty wounded, together with a doctor,
nurses, food and water enough to last until they were well.
They ventilated the caves, camouflaged the vents, sealed up
the entrance and left. The wounded stayed. The war flowed
on above them and sometimes they could even hear the
Germans passing over their heads. They counted on other
Partisans being able to fight their way back and relieve them.
If that didn't happen by the time they were well, they broke
out themselves and took their chances.

We sat against one of the old houses and had what George
called a Partisan breakfast: a cup of water and a messtin full
of some kind of cereal. The cereal looked like cornmeal and
tasted like cardboard. But it was hot and it went down and
stayed down. Afterward we rested for half an hour. My feet
hurt, but I didn't dare take off my boots. I never would have
gotten them on again. Finally the order came to get ready and
we all stood up and got in line. My thumbs were hooked in
the straps of my pack, when I felt a tug on them. I turned
and saw Peter motioning me to take the pack off. "He says
there is someone to take the pack," George said. I explained

I78

WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

that I was perfectly able to carry the pack myself. "But these
are special bearers," George said. "They are carrying all the
packs." That was something else again. I didn't take off the
pack, since everyone else was still wearing his, but I asked
George where the bearers were. "Over there," he said, point-
ing up the road. All I could see were five old women from
the village, standing at the head of the line.

"You don't mean those old ladies?" I said.

"Certainly," George said. "They are very strong."

"Are you kidding?" I said. They must have been sixty
years old. As I watched, two men from our group brought
over a rucksack full of posters and one of the old women
picked it up and slung it over her shoulder.

"They would not even feel your pack," George said.

I adjusted my pack on my shoulders and shook my head.
"Listen," I said. "How will it look when I get back and peo-
ple ask if I carried a pack over all those mountains and I say
no, an old lady carried it for me?"

They finally gave up trying to take the pack, and Peter
went up front and started off. The five old women followed
close behind him, each carrying a rucksack full of literature.
They sang as they walked, their voices very high and old
but the songs full of a wonderful affirmation. They sang one
song, chanting a stanza in their high voices and everyone
else singing back the chorus. The song was of the region
and how hospitable its people usually were and how they
welcomed everyone, but how they would welcome the Fas-

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cists with bullets and knives. The chorus was shouted, rather
than sung, and the angry words boomed and rumbled over
the countryside.

We only walked six hours this time. The path went uphill
most of the way and after the fourth hour I began to think
maybe I should have given them the pack. Everyone was a
little droopy by then, except the old women. Even when we
stopped for a break they remained standing. We came to an-
other village toward the middle of the afternoon. We stopped
outside again and Peter and Ranka went in, and then they
returned and motioned for George and me to go with them.
The rest stayed where they were. We followed the other two
into the village, which was identical with the last one, and
entered a large stone house in the center. There were Partisan
soldiers standing outside who saluted as we entered. Inside
was a large dark room with a table in the center and another
table in a corner, bearing a radio and a German field tele-
phone. Three people were in the room: two men and a
pretty blonde girl. They were seated on backless wooden
chairs around the table, studying a large map. They stood
up as we entered and we shook hands all around. Then one
of the men left and the rest of us sat down. "This is the head-
quarters of a guerrilla detachment," George whispered. "This
man is the major in command. The girl is on his star!."

Peter and the major were talking as if they were old friends.
I felt suddenly very tired and washed out. The man who had
left the room reappeared carrying a tray on which were six
small glasses and a decanter half-full of a colorless liquid.

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WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

He set this on the table and Peter slapped his knee when he
saw it. The major carefully filled the glasses and passed
them around. He lifted his own, said something containing
the word Americanats and tossed it off. I did the same and
immediately wished I hadn't. The stuff hit the bottom of
my stomach and bounced around like hot mercury. I knew
what it was; it was Schlivowitz, only someone must have
mixed a little Sterno in with mine.

"Good, hey?" George said.

I put down my glass and before I knew what was happen-
ing it was filled again.

"Ha!" Peter said. He had refilled his glass and was
waiting for me. We touched glasses. "Peter says he is your
brother," George said.

We drank again, and then three more times. Then George
said, "Now we eat." I stood up and nearly fell on my face.
"You should have let them carry your pack," George said.

"What pack?" I said.

The major led the way into another room and I made that
all right. There was another table here, with plates on it. We
sat down. I almost missed the chair, but caught hold of the
table in time. A soldier came in with a pot full of hunks of
cold lamb. He set it on the table and everyone reached in and
pulled out a hunk. There was no need for silverware. The
lamb was tough and saltless, but it tasted fine. There was
enough for each one to have a piece and a half. I was all
right after I got some food in me. No one talked much

(during the meal; we were all too hungry. The soldier re-
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turned with another potful of water and we took turns
drinking out of that. When we finished, the major led the
way back to the other room. There was a poster on one wall
and I went over and looked at it. The poster showed the
figure of a woman raising a gun over her head. The caption
underneath said in Croatian: Women in the Fight Against
Fascism. Underneath that were the words Women's Day
and a date. The drawing was very modern and effective.

George and Peter were talking to the major, and when they
finished George came over and said to me: "We are going
to pick up a Chetnik commander who has just come over
to the Partisans. Would you like to come along?" I said I
would, and Peter and the major led the way out of the
house. As we walked down the street, George explained that
we were to take the ex-Chetnik along to headquarters. He
said that the general policy with Chetniks is first to offer
them the chance to join the Partisans and fight against the
Germans. If they refuse they are then told to return home
and stay there. Only if they are known for looting or tortur-
ing are they kept for trial. "Once we captured the same
Chetnik eleven times,'* George said. "Each time we sent him
home and each time we captured him again." I asked why
they hadn't finally shot him. "Don't be silly," George said.
"We got eleven rifles from that man."

The ex-Chetnik was in another house at the end of the
village. He was in the kitchen, talking to two Partisan
soldiers. He was a thin, sharp-faced man about thirty-five.
He wore a tweed suit, somewhat too large for him, and a

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WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

peaked cap. The major greeted him jovially and we shook
hands all around. Then the major turned to talk to the other
men and Peter and the ex-Chetnik began to talk together.
George stood listening and I watched, not understanding a
word. Peter did most of the talking; he seemed to be ex-
plaining something. They talked for about fifteen minutes,
and then we shook hands again and went out, leaving the
Chetnik and the two soldiers behind. On the way back I
asked George what Peter had been saying. "He was telling
this man why it was necessary to fight with us, rather than
with the Germans," George said. I said that the man had
already made up his mind to do that, and George nodded.
"But he does not yet understand what we represent," he said.
"You must understand too. We are not only against the
Fascists, we are for a democratic, federal republic of Yugo-
slavia."

I spent the rest of the afternoon talking with George and
the major, and trying to get something on the radio. The
major was an old Partisan; he had been fighting since the
German invasion in the spring of 1941, mostly in this one
sector. "It is my home," he explained. "I would be lost away
from here." He apologized for the old and dirty pants he
wore, explaining that he lost his good pair to the Germans
last week. He and some of his men had been in the last
village we had come through, getting some laundry done. He
had been sitting in his underwear in the front room of a
house, when he heard familiar sounds outside. He looked
out the window and saw five German tanks coming up the

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road. The rest of his men had also heard the tanks, and they
all immediately dove out the back window, minus their
pants. The major said it was lucky he had been wearing his
shoes, otherwise he never would have gotten away. There was
a lot of static on the radio and the only stations I could get
were Vienna and Bari, Italy. Once I caught some American
jazz, but couldn't hold it and never found it again. It sounded
like "That Old Black Magic," which had been popular when
I left the States. All I could get from Vienna was beerhall
music, and Bari was all Italian opera.

When it got dark we ate again, the same kind of a meal. It
didn't taste so good this time. Then we laid our blankets on
the floor of the room with the radio and went to sleep. The
floor was harder than the ground, but warmer. We got up at
daylight and ate lamb again. We went outside where the rest
of the group was waiting, and Peter checked the formation
quickly. The ex-Chetnik was with them, carrying a small
handbag. When we started I felt stiff for the first time. The
five old women were no longer with us, but their place
had been taken by three old men and two other women from
this village. We took a dirt path out of the village and imme-
diately began to climb. The path wasn't steep, but it was
steadily uphill. The Partisans sang as usual; I was too busy
conserving my strength. We crossed a river after an hour,
picking our way across the wreckage of a stone bridge. "We
blew this with German dynamite," George said. After the
river we went through another village, like the ones we had
passed except that all the houses here were burned. On their

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WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

walls were scrawled Italian Fascist mottos and German mili-
tary directions. "We caught some of the bastards who did
this," George said. He didn't say any more.

The road became flat and broad after we passed, winding
dustily through a valley. The mountains were practically on
top of us. Some had snow on their peaks. We walked slower
than we had before, almost leisurely. The girl nurses were be-
hind me, chattering as they walked. Ranka came back from
the head of the line and walked with them for a while, then
came up to George and me. "Ranka is disgusted with the
nurses," George said. "All they talk about are men. She says to
listen to them you would not know what kind of war they
were fighting." Ranka shook her head sadly and said some-
thing to George. "They talk a great deal about Peter," George
said. "They think he is very handsome, but too old."

During the march I went up with George to the Chetnik
and talked with him. He seemed eager to talk. He was a
Slovenian and had been a lieutenant in the Royal Yugoslav
Navy before the war. During the Italian occupation he had
become liaison officer between the Yugoslav prisoners and
the Italians, but some of his people thought he was collaborat-
ing. When Italy capitulated and the Partisans took his town,
they sentenced him to death. He escaped and joined the
Chetniks, who at that time, he said, were organizing an army
in Dalmatia with Italian permission. Because of his military
background he became Chetnik commander in the city of
Sibenik and then commander of the Chetnik Skradin
Brigade. He said he took orders in both jobs from the local

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German commanders, who supplied the Chetniks, paid them,
fed them and told them where and when to fight. Finally, he
said, he could stand it no longer, so he came over to the
Partisans. At first he was very unsure of himself with the
others, but as the march continued and everyone was very
nice to him, he lost this insecurity and talked more and louder.
I was surprised that everyone was so nice to him, since I had
seen signs of how the Chetniks operated. But they treated
him simply as a Partisan who had just joined, and people
kept walking up and shaking hands and telling him how
good it was that he had come to fight the common enemy.

The day was cool and pleasant, and we marched all day.
We came to another village just as the sun was setting. Peter
and Ranka made arrangements again and we had a Partisan
supper. This was the same as a Partisan breakfast. I thought
we would stay here for the night, but George said we had to
continue to another village before daylight. He didn't say
why, but he didn't have to. We all sat by the side of the road
while the women of the village brought us the food. George
said that all the men had either gone off to join the Partisans
or had been impressed by Mikhailovitch for the Chetniks.

When we finished eating, the women began a dance. They
danced to their own singing, a kind of snake dance, each
woman holding to the woman ahead of her. The line started
with only six or seven women, but then members of our
group got up and joined, and finally there were at least
thirty people on the line. George translated the songs for me.
One was about Tito, asking him on behalf of the women to

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WALK THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA

send the men home, and Tito answering : It is not yet time,
it is not yet time. Another was called "Republic" and the first
few lines were "Republic, we want you. You belong to us.
We have won you with our blood."

I thought at first that nothing on earth could get me on my
feet after that march, but after a while I couldn't stay down
any longer and got into the line with George and danced and
sang without knowing the words or even the tune. It didn't
seem to matter, though. The singing and dancing went on for
an hour or more, then Peter broke up the party and everyone
sat down again. "We must rest a while longer," George said.
"We have to walk all night and there is heavy climbing." He
didn't say anything for a while and then said, "We must wait
until it is really dark, because there is another road to cross."

We waited until dark and then began marching again.
We left the road after the village and struck off through the
woods. We followed a stone path. The noise of the displaced
stones was like a waterfall, and it seemed that anyone within
fifty miles could hear us. It was completely dark, but my
eyes were used to it and I followed along all right. The path
went up a very steep hill and down the other side among
rocks that forced us to climb rather than walk. We stopped
several times. There were no flares and no other sounds
when we stopped. Then we stopped for what seemed half
an hour. It was cold. When we picked up again we con-
tinued along the stone path and then there was a gleam
ahead of us and we came at right angles to a concrete road
and crossed quickly and silently, Peter standing in the middle

KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

of this road as he had the last, whispering, "Swiftly, swiftly!"
We picked up the stone path across the road and followed
it downhill. There was the sound of rushing water, and sud-
denly we were at a river. I could see little whitecaps in the
dark. I asked George if we would have to swim across and he
said he didn't know. He seemed uneasy; I asked him why and
he shook his head. "This is bad territory. Too many patrols."
There was movement at the head of the line, then a heavy
splash and the low sound of voices. The line began to move
slowly. When I got to the river, Peter and a few other men
were there, holding down the end of a tree trunk that seemed
to stretch across to the other side. I stepped up on the trunk,
following the man ahead of me, and began to walk across. It
was slippery. The water looked black and ugly below, and
at one place it slapped angrily against the log. The tree trunk
ended half-way across, but there was a sandbar and I stepped
onto that and waded ankledeep to the other side. I waited
for George, and then we rejoined the others further up. We
waited there until everyone had come across. A few people
fell in, but they were rescued without much trouble and
everyone got across.

Peter was the last across, and as soon as he arrived we
began to climb. There was no path here, only a cliff going
straight up. Some places I had to pull myself up with my
hands. One place we had to climb up on the shoulders of the
man behind, and from there to a little ledge. I don't know
how the last man made it. I don't know how I got to the top,
but finally I did and collapsed along with everyone else

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except Peter, who kept walking around and peering down
the cUff to see if everyone made it. Everyone did, and we
started off again, up a hill and down a hill, seemingly fol-
lowing no path. We came to the top of a hill and crossed a
railroad track, the rails broken and twisted and the ties in
little pieces. We passed through another ghost village, the
houses burned and empty, and far below was a huge valley
with a village at each end. We were coming down between
them and George pointed to the village at the left. "That
one is full of Germans," he said.

There might have been six miles between the villages. We
walked deliberately down the mountain, heading for the vil-
lage at the right, and the dawn approached just as deliberately.
No one seemed bothered. It got light enough to see faces, and
we still had at least two miles to go. We finally made it with
the sun, straggling into the village in a long, unwieldy line.
The villagers were waiting for us. They had seen us coming
down the mountain and had cereal and water waiting. I was
too tired to eat. I looked at the food and tasted it, but that
was all. I asked George why the Germans didn't come after
us, since they could have seen us coming down the moun-
tain. "We would be in the hills before they came," George
said. He and the poet and Ranka and I went into one of the
houses and laid our blankets on the floor and lay down and
went instantly to sleep.

Peter awakened us at noon. There was nothing to eat,
since the village didn't have enough for itself, so we lined
up and started off at once. We began the usual climb, and

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that was the beginning of the real mountains. We climbed the
rest of the day and slept outside that night between two
patches of snow on top of the mountain. George and the
poet and I pooled our three blankets and slept together for
warmth. In the morning it took us two hours to descend on
the other side. Then we started all over again on the next
mountain.

From then on I began to lose track of time. I would see
the sun at the edge of the horizon and think it was day-
light, and then it would get dark. Even the Partisans stopped
singing for some of those mountains. We passed other vil-
lages, all the same, poor and small and primitive. The
children would wait for us at the edge, twelve-year-olds
looking like seven, their eyes huge and liquid and their bellies
swollen from hunger. But none of them begged, not even
when they saw an American. The only thing they ever asked
for were pencils. We passed many classes held in the open,
old men and women and little children being taught to read
and write by a Partisan soldier or a young girl. At one village
a little boy came up and asked if I were an American. I said
yes and asked if he were a Croatian. "No, no," he said.
"Partisan."

Finally we came to a village and George said the next vil-
lage over the mountain was headquarters. We stayed here
overnight and in the morning the party broke up. George
and Ranka and the poet and Zivko the photographer and
the six nurses and I went toward headquarters. The rest
headed for a near-by town to wait until the youth congress

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began. This was to avoid concentration of the delegates in
one place in case of air attack, and also to simplify the food
problem. My group took it very slow that last day, following
a good dirt road that wound easily over the mountain. The
road had been blown in several places, but it was easy to
walk on. Ranka spent most of the day lecturing the nurses
on their political deficiencies. The poet told me she was a
Partisan hero; she had held a hill with one machine gun
all by herself against four German counterattacks. The poet
talked about poetry for the first time; he confessed that he
had once been a Dadaist, but that phase hadn't lasted very
long.

The day went quickly. We came to the top of the moun-
tain well before dark. We walked around a bend in the
road and there was another valley below us. It was green
and rolling and very long, and in the center was a lovely
village, larger than any we had seen. It looked peaceful and
perfectly normal. "That is Tito's headquarters," George said.
It was really very beautiful. The surrounding mountains
were capped with snow, but the valley itself was green and
fertile. I could see a tiny farmer plowing near a toy farm-
house beneath us. We started down the road, and as we
descended, the valley grew lifesize and real. When we were
half-way down I took another look at the village. It was still
beautiful, but now I could see that most of the houses didn't
have any roofs.

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3. TITO'S HEADQUARTERS

THE ROAD led through half-plowed fields, past houses that
seemed strange because they were undamaged. Women and
old men and children working in the fields stopped to
stare at us. The valley was in shadow as the sun went down,
but the snow on the mountains began to color as we walked :
first pink and then red and then slowly into orange, and
when the mountain finally hid the sun, the orange faded
gently into blue and the blue into a gray without warmth,
growing colder and harder as it blended with the blackness
of the mountain. The valley grew suddenly cold. I took a
pair of GI gloves from my pocket and put them on.

Ranka was leading the way. She stopped when we came
to the edge of town. There was a three-story house there,
with two Partisan soldiers standing outside. Ranka went up
and saluted, and they spoke together for a while. I looked
out over the darkening valley. There was a smell of rain in
the air. Ranka called to the nurses, who went up to join her.
They talked for a few minutes, then Ranka shook hands
with each of the girls and came back to us alone. She said
something to George and started of? again, the nurses waving
good-by from the house. "This is their headquarters," George
said. "They will be happy here. It is full of men."

The dirt road now turned into a street, with sidewalks on
either side. The houses were close together. About every fifth
one was intact; the rest were burned or bombed-out in the

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usual manner. They were all pocked with bullet holes. We
passed a row of store fronts, the names still lettered over the
missing doorways. There was a tailor shop, a barber shop, a
butcher shop and what had been a grocery. They were all
empty. The streets were also empty; the town was quiet
with the deceptive stillness that falls often over the front.
Ranka turned a corner and we came onto a street that had
once been paved. Grass was now growing through the pave-
ment. Ranka stopped before the door of a two-story frame
house. She asked the poet something and he nodded, so she
opened the door and walked in. The rest of us followed. We
came into a small room, bare except for a table and five
chairs. Two young men and a girl were sitting at the table.
They jumped up when they saw us and the girl ran over
and hugged Ranka. Then everyone began hugging every-
one else, and I went over to a chair and sat down.

When they were all hugged out, they sat down and Ranka
introduced me. I didn't catch the girl's name, but the men
were Martin and Slavko. Martin was short and chubby and
boyish, with a wide, innocent face and very white teeth.
Slavko was lean and dark and had a grip like iron. George
whispered that he had been a well-known soccer player in
Sarajevo. Slavko was president of the youth organization
and Martin and the girl were on the executive committee.
After the introductions I couldn't understand much of what
was going on, so I put my head on the table and fell asleep.
I slept for half an hour. When George woke me, there were
bowls of soup and a big plate of coarse brown bread on

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the table. The soup contained rice and pieces of lamb. Ranka
didn't eat much; she was too busy talking; but everyone else
put away at least three bowls. When we were finished Slavko
spoke to George, who said to me, "Would you like to take
a hot shower?" I hadn't been out of my uniform for three
weeks, so I said yes. I got a towel, a pair of socks and some
reasonably clean underwear out of my pack and followed
Slavko and George out of the house.

Slavko led the way down the paved street. We passed a
bombed building that looked as if it had been a factory;
workmen were busy with repairs and Slavko said that the
congress was to be held here. They had thought at first that
they couldn't repair it, because they had no nails, but a hurry
call brought nails smuggled out of the occupied city of
Zagreb; and while they were at it they had also smuggled out
some tapestries to hang on the walls. Railroad tracks crossed
our street farther on, and then we came to a large building
that might have been a schoolhouse or a dormitory. Slavko
led the way inside. Several Partisans were in the hall and
Slavko turned us over to them and left. One of the Partisans
talked with George, then led us down the hall to a door,
opened it and closed it after us. The room was hot and there
was a door at the other end. Benches ran along the sides.
"There is someone taking a shower now," George said. "We
can go in when he is finished, but we must not take more
than five minutes."

We sat down and began to undress. The other man had
not finished by the time we were undressed, so George and

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I amused ourselves by searching for lice on our clothes.
George found more than I did, but he said that was because
I didn't look as closely. The other man's clothes were piled
in a corner. They seemed to be a uniform of some sort. Then
he came out, a short, plump young man with very white
skin. We nodded to each other and George and I went in
to take our shower. The water was really hot and we soaped
ourselves twelve times. When we came out the other man
was dressed in the uniform of a Russian major. George spoke
to him and said, "He is from the Soviet mission here." The
major left and George and I dressed quickly. When we got
outside it was dark and had begun to rain. The rain felt good
after the hot room. Only Slavko and the poet were still at
the house. The poet said we were going to another house
to sleep. We followed Slavko down the street to the railroad
tracks, then cut off and walked along the tracks. The ties
were too close together for a normal stride and walking was
difficult. It was very dark and several times I had to hold
out my hand to be sure someone was ahead of me. Once
we were stopped by a sentry and stood quietly in the dark,
the rain pouring down our backs, while Slavko went for-
ward to give the password.

We walked for about an hour. We finally left the railroad
track, slid down a hill, forded a little stream, climbed an-
other hill and came to a farmhouse. Slavko knocked on the
door and an old farmer answered, holding a candle in his
hand. Slavko spoke to him and he led us down a hall to a
low-ceilinged room with three crude wooden beds. Slavko

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shook hands with me, said good-by and left. The farmer put
the candle on the windowsill and also left. I dropped my
pack, took off all my clothes except my underwear and got
into one of the beds. The beds were just wooden slats, but
covered with straw and a blanket, and there was another
blanket for a cover. There was even a pillow stuffed with hay.
I stretched out on my back and just lay there. The others did
the same. The candle was near George's bed and he leaned
over and blew it out. No one said anything, then the poet
sighed softly. I fell asleep.

We were awakened in the morning by a little boy, bring-
ing us a quart can of goat's milk, a jar of honey and some
bread. He said his name was Mirko; he was the son of the
farmer who lived in the house. We ate with Mirko standing
in the middle of the room, giggling at the American. Then
we dressed and went outside. The morning was clear and
we could see half the valley. Specks of people were plowing
wherever we looked. The air was heavy with the warm, rich,
turned-earth smell of spring. After we washed out of a rain
barrel, George suggested we go down to the village, and
Mirko pointed out the way.

It was nice walking back to town. A little brook ran be-
side the tracks and there were flowers growing along the
way. We passed a little boy and two little girls playing along
the tracks, all of them wearing the Partisan cap with the
red star. The poet said, "Death to Fascism" and the children
answered solemnly, "Freedom to the People," standing up
very straight. We went directly to the house where we had

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been the night before. Martin and Slavko were there. They
immediately began asking questions about America: what
did we think of the war, of Yugoslavia, what was America
like today, what kind of a man was President Roosevelt?
We had been talking for maybe an hour when we heard
the roar of planes. We listened for a minute, then George
said, "Germans." We all went outside and stood in the street,
looking up. Overhead was a flight of Stukas, six of them,
quite high and heading east. "We had better go into the
ditch," George said.

A ditch ran parallel with the street; we went into it and
stood there, watching the planes. They passed out of sight,
still heading east. The echo of their motors hung in the air;
then we heard the dull, very faint crunch of bombs.

"That is the headquarters of our Fifth Corps," George said.

The planes reappeared, still in perfect formation, and dis-
appeared toward the west. I started to leave the ditch, but
George held me back. "Maybe they will return," he said.
They did return, or maybe six others returned, flying slowly
and serenely, secure in the knowledge that the Partisans had
no guns that could reach them. They shuttled back and forth
until we got to know the exact interval between their pass-
ing over and the low thunder of their bombs on the Fifth
Corps.

We stayed in the ditch all that time. I tried twice to leave,
knowing that they were not after us, but each time George
pulled me back. Planes were the only things I had ever seen
the Partisans afraid of; this was understandable, since they

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had no weapons with which to fight planes. Nowhere else
could the Germans still use the obsolete Stukas. Only against
Partisans could they use loo-mile-an-hour training planes,
in which the pilot carried the bombs on his lap and threw
them over the side. So we sat in the ditch all morning and
watched the Stukas fly lazily overhead and imagined what
they would do when they reached the village of the Fifth
Corps; how they would pick their targets at leisure and peel
off and scream down and drop their bombs, and then return
to strafe at will, chasing single people across an open field
because they could afford to do it here. Finally the last for-
mation flew perfectly across. We waited a decent while and
then returned to the house.

We spent the rest of the day there. I felt kind of dopy,
probably from the effects of the march, and had some trouble
getting my eyes to focus. Martin and Slavko told stories
of their underground activities in Zagreb before they left
to join the Partisans outside. Martin had been a student and
Slavko was studying to be a veterinarian. Slavko had organ-
ized the first demonstration of force against the Germans in
Zagreb and Martin had been a killer. The demonstration of
force consisted of throwing homemade grenades from a
second-story window into a passing Nazi parade. The killing
had been simply that of walking up to a specific Fascist in
the street, putting a pistol against his stomach, pulling the
trigger several times and then running like hell. It was not
too difficult associating this work with Slavko, who looked
out of Graustark, but it was altogether incongruous with

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Martin, who looked out of Henry Aldrich. He was twenty-
four, but looked seventeen. His entire English vocabulary
consisted of the words "Twentieth Century Fox"; he had no
clear idea of what this delightful phrase meant, but he would
repeat it over and over again, looking very pleased with
himself.

But the hardest thing to accept about these two, and about
the younger Partisans in general, was not their youth but
their normality. They were all completely healthy, because
they knew why they were killing and what it meant to them.
There are practically no cases of war neurosis in Tito's army,
and the main reason is that they have a good idea why they
are righting and believe in this idea.

We had dinner when it got dark : soup and some kind of
meat and tea. Then George said we would go to a movie.
There was a Russian film playing near by in the House of
Culture. This was a former gymnasium that now acted as
a theater. The poet said the Russians had sent in three films,
the British one feature and some newsreels and the Amer-
icans none as yet, although they had heard they were getting
one called Sun Valley Serenade. The Russian films were
about guerrilla fighting and the battle of Stalingrad. The
British had sent Desert Victory. The House of Culture was
jammed when we got there, but we found seats at the side.
The audience was divided between peasants from the village
and Partisan men and women soldiers. The walls were deco-
rated with slogans about Tito and Yugoslavia and the Allies,
and pictures of Tito, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. The

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audience applauded when the lights went down and George
said, "Most of them have seen this four or five times. They
like it very much. For many of them it is the first cinema
they have seen."

The picture was about a Russian town invaded by the
Germans, and how the townspeople took to the hills and be-
came guerrillas. There were no subtitles, but it was easy to
follow. The audience loved it. When the guerrilla leader
shot the German commander three times at close range,
they yelled so loud you couldn't hear the dialogue. I had
never seen such a relationship between an audience and a
film. The film was about the audience; everything they saw
they had done themselves, and any one of them could have
taken the place of people in the film. Afterwards George and
the poet and I said good-night and walked home. We didn't
talk much. The night was cold and we walked fast. When
we were in bed, the poet asked if I had liked the film and
I said yes. "We like it because it is true," he said. "You could
make a thousand films like that about Yugoslavia and they
would all be true." I said that it would probably seem fan-
tastic to most Americans, and he thought for a minute and
then said, "That would be too bad, wouldn't it?"

The next day Mirko awakened us again with breakfast.
This time he didn't giggle, but just stared at me. Later we
walked into town and met Martin. He had a young boy
with him and said I could see some of the Cabinet Ministers
today and the boy would take me to their house. George
stayed in town. The boy and I cut across the valley and

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walked for about an hour until we came to a large farm-
house by a stream. A middle-aged man and a small, pretty
woman were standing in front of the house. The woman had
tiny freckles and brown hair and looked about thirty. The
man was short and heavy, with a round, full-jowled face
that was brown from the sun. They both wore British battle
dress and red-starred caps. The man held out his hand and
said in French that his name was Ribnika, he was the
Minister- of Information for the Committee of National
Liberation, and this was his wife. We shook hands all around
and went over and sat down on a rock overlooking the
stream. I had heard of Ribnika; he had been the publisher
of the largest Belgrade daily, called Politi\a, and now had
joined the Partisans.

I spent the whole day talking to him and his wife. We
were joined later by a tall major, who had been second-in-
command of a brigade until he had been recalled from the
front to take charge of postwar planning. They all talked of
what they planned for Yugoslavia after the war. First, ot
course, there would be an election in which the people could
decide whether or not the Partisans wanted the king to re-
turn. Ribnika said that the new Government of National
Liberation would stand as a body against the king's dele-
gates. Tito's government is not one party, but a popular front
of all the political parties that had fought against the Fascists.
These parties would not run against each other in postwar
elections, but would continue in the same coalition that had
been so successful during the war. Economically, postwar

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Yugoslavia would respect private property and welcome
foreign capital. Before anything else there is a tremendous
rehabilitation job to be done and they realize they need the
products of other countries to do this. Ribnika added that
they fully intend paying for what they get, both outright and
in the form of concessions.

We had dinner in the house, rice and lamb, and then
Ribnika suggested I spend the night with them. I slept in a
room with the Ribnikas, the major and the Cabinet secretary,
who had been imprisoned by the prewar government for
twelve years and who had written a novel about it. The beds
were like the one I had been sleeping on, but there were two
blankets for a cover. No one took off anything except their
shoes. I slept in Ribnika's bed and he doubled up with his
wife. The bed was hardly wide enough for one.

The next morning I said good-by and walked back to town
by myself. On the way I heard the blast of a plane and a
Dornier appeared suddenly, flying very low. I dove for a
ditch, but the plane just cruised around, big and black and
insolent. A few machine guns rattled at it from time to time,
but it didn't seem bothered at all. After a while it went away
and I got up and continued on to town. George was at the
house when I got there. He said the congress was starting that
night. They were holding it at night because of possible air
attack. It was originally supposed to start the night we ar-
rived, but had been postponed because the delegation from
Montenegro had not arrived. The Montenegrins had finally
come last night. A hundred of them had started out two

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months ago; fifty showed up. They had fought two pitched
battles with Germans and Chetniks on the way. Now eight
hundred delegates were here; they represented every section
of Yugoslavia, including occupied territory.

I took a nap in the afternoon, and then we had dinner and
walked over to the hall. The bombed building had been com-
pletely transformed. The floors had been shellacked, the walls
painted and the precious tapestries hung beautifully along
the sides. Slogans were painted everywhere: "Long Live
Tito," "Long Live the United Nations," "Long Live a Free,
Federal Yugoslavia." Four huge portraits of Roosevelt,
Churchill, Stalin and Tito hung over a dais at one end of
the hall. The rest of the hall was full of benches, arranged
in a semicircle around the dais. Most of the benches were
already filled with delegates. They sat by sections: Belgrade
on one side, Zagreb next to them, Serbia in front of them,
Montenegro in the rear. Everyone seemed to be singing;
each section was singing its own songs, but nobody seemed
to mind. George and I went over and sat with the Dalmatian
delegates we had marched in with. They were very excited
when they saw us and said the village they had gone to had
been Fifth Corps headquarters and they had all been caught
in the Stuka attack the other day. Many people were killed
and the village destroyed, and now Fifth Corps headquarters
were somewhere in the woods. Peter was not with the dele-
gates; his mission had been to join a guerrilla detachment
operating a hundred miles from here, so he had gone on
his way.

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The dais gradually filled up with the executive committee
of the youth organization. I recognized Slavko and Martin
and Ranka and the girl whose name I didn't know. The front
row had filled up with Cabinet Ministers and British officers
from the mission, looking very British, and Russian offi-
cers from their mission, looking very Russian. The young
Russian major we had met in the shower was with them. "He
is the delegate from the youth of the Soviet Union," George
said. They had invited delegates from all Allied youth, but
the war had interfered. Lack of transportation had prevented
American and English delegates from accepting. Delegates
from the Bulgarian resistance movement, the Greek EAM,
and the Italian resistance movement had accepted, but only
two Italians had made it through the German lines. The Rus-
sian major belonged to the mission, but he was young enough
to qualify as a delegate. There were also Italian delegates
from the Italian units fighting with the Partisans. There were
several brigades of these and the Partisans had great respect
for them, saying they were brave men and excellent fighters.

When the hall was filled, Slavko got up and stood until the
singing stopped. He said loudly, "Death to Fascism!" and the
hall roared back, "Freedom to the People!" Then Slavko
called the congress to order and began reading cables from
the Bulgarians and the Greeks, saying how sorry they were
that they couldn't come. He had just finished the second
cable when the people near the door began to murmur, and
then everyone stood up and began to talk excitedly and clap
their hands and crane their necks, and Tito walked in. He

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smiled and talked to the delegates on the aisle as he walked
to his seat, and when the crowd finally saw who it was they
began to roar and whistle and stamp their feet. A few of
them began to chant and soon everyone took it up, clapping
their hands in time and chanting, "Ti-to! Ti-to! Ti-to!" Tito
stopped to shake hands with the British and Russian officers
and then sat down, but the crowd wouldn't stop. The chant
got louder and faster until the whole building shook, and then
it got really fast and they began to lose the time and just yell
"Ti-to!" as fast as they could, and finally it rang out with a
great yell and burst of applause that made my ears ring.

When the audience was quiet again, Slavko recalled the
meeting to order, finished reading the cables and then intro-
duced the honored guest of the evening, Marshal Tito. That
set the audience of! again, but Tito stepped up to the rostrum
that had been set before the dais and held up his hand until
they stopped. Then he began to talk. He spoke for twenty
minutes, quietly and without oratory. He didn't make a
speech; he talked. He told the delegates how glad he was to
see them, how important their work was and how important
they themselves were. The reaction of the audience bore no
resemblance to the reaction of youth either to Adolf Hitler
or Frank Sinatra. Tito was a striking figure, but they were
interested in what he had to say. He wore a gray uniform,
cut very simply, with gold oak leaves on the sleeve and the
collar. His face was strong, but not hard; he had high cheek-
bones and a sensitive mouth. He looked his age, which is
fifty-three, but he looked very fit. When he finished his

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speech, he said, "Death to Fascism — Freedom to the People,"
and walked back to his seat. The applause was loud, but not'
extraordinary. It was almost anticlimactic after that initial
ovation, but it helped establish for me the basis of Tito's popu-
larity. It is not based on hypnosis, but on his ability as a prac-
tical leader.

After Tito, one of the British officers greeted the congress
in careful Serbian, and then the Russian major and one of the
Italian delegates spoke briefly in their respective languages.
Then Slavko called on various delegates to tell what their
groups had been doing since the last congress. The speakers
ranged from a thirteen-year-old boy who had just killed six
Germans to a twenty-four-year-old major general, who had
been a peasant in Bosnia when the Germans came. A girl
from Serbia spoke about the work her agricultural brigades
were doing. A thin, embarrassed boy from Croatia recited
figures on the work his detachment had been doing along the
Zagreb-Belgrade railroad: ninety-three trains derailed, three
hundred and fifty miles of track torn up, seventy-two German
trucks destroyed, twenty-two bridges blown. The audience
listened closely, checking the list against their own.

A very assured sixteen-year-old boy told of the job he and
two of his friends had assumed for themselves one day. They
were with a division on the outskirts of Zagreb and had de-
cided one day to go into the city and kill a prominent Nazi
general there. They slipped through the German lines and
went to the general's house, but he wasn't home. No one was
home, so the three of them had come away with four ma-

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chine pistols, two rifles, a nice sharp hunting knife and all the
general's medals, including one he had recently received
from King Boris of Bulgaria. The boy apologized for having
failed to carry out the mission. He said they would kill the
general some other time.

They went on like that until two in the morning. A girl
from Herzegovina spoke of how her group had taught every-
one in their village to read and write. Another girl talked of
the concentration camp at Jasenovac in Croatia, where the
Ustachi, the native Fascists, burned prisoners alive in huge
incinerators. Their record was fifteen hundred in one night.
A little boy told how his group had started to rebuild their
village, burned by Chetniks. He said it was hard when you
had no materials, but they would do it. A boy from Serbia
spoke about the necessity for a federal Yugoslavia after
the war. A Jewish boy from Dalmatia told how his unit
had picked up some American fliers who had been forced to
bail out. The Germans had chased them for three days and
the Partisans had kept up a running fight, throwing a cordon
around the fliers, carrying one who was hurt and who
couldn't walk, four Partisans at a time, until they dropped
from exhaustion, and then four more. They had been shelled
and strafed by Messerschmitts and they had lost many men,
but they had brought the Americans out.

They all spoke simply, with little sense of the dramatic
and without conscious humor. Many were shy and afraid
and some were confused, but they each had something to say
and they said it, and everything they had to say was im

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portant. Slavko finally called a break at two o'clock. I tried
to get to Tito during this, but the crush around him was too
thick. The break lasted fifteen minutes and during that time
the dais was cleared and converted into a stage. George said
there would be dancing now by members of the national
ballet company. "There was also to be a play by the national
theater group," he said, "but I think that will be tomorrow
night." He said these two groups had been organized as soon
as there was any liberated territory. The nuclei were profes-
sionals who were well known in Yugoslavia before the war,
but the best dancers and actors from the various divisions
were sent back from the front for training. The lights finally
went out, except for those over the stage. A group of men
and women in native costume walked out and formed a semi-
circle. One of the men stepped out to lead, bowed to the
audience and the entertainment began. There were singers
and dancers and a man who recited his own poem very
energetically. The dances were of the region and the girls
who danced them were very pretty in a healthy kind of a way.
After the entertainment there was another break and then
a few more speeches until five. I found it hard to keep awake
during these. The British and most of the Russian officers
had left, but the young Russian major was still there. Every
so often he would doze off, then straighten up and look
around to see if anyone had seen him.

When the meeting was over, George and I filtered out
with our delegates. We walked back along the railroad track
together. The night was running out and the valley was

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beginning to take shape out of the darkness. Some of the
delegates sang quietly as they walked. There was another
farmhouse just before we came to ours, and George led the
way into this one. "We will eat here first," he said. "It is a
special congress breakfast." A bunch of women were in the
kitchen, preparing food by candlelight. George said they were
from the anti-Fascist woman's organization and had come
from this valley and the next one to cook for the delegates.
We got plates of food and carried them outside and sat on.
the grass to eat with the others. The food was the regular
rice and lamb, but it tasted pretty good and there was tea to
go with it. We ate slowly, then handed in our plates, and
said good-night to the others and started up the hill to our
house. When we got to the top I turned around and looked
over the valley. It was light enough to see now. The valley
was very quiet, but if I listened hard I could hear the faint
rumble of cannon fire from the other side of the mountain.
George and I stood there for a long time, looking over the
valley. When we finally went in, the sun was coming up
over the mountains and the snow was beginning to turn
from gray back to white again.

—May 1944.

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EPILOGUE

w

F FHE:

THEN HE got off the train he let a redcap take his
barracks bag. He was still confused by all the people and
the richness of everything, but the station looked the same,
not even more crowded. There just seemed to be more girls
around. There were even girls in the information booth.
They looked more beautiful than any girls he had ever seen.

"You want a taxi?" the redcap asked.

"Yes, please," he said, and then was suddenly afraid. "No,
wait a minute. Is there a restaurant around?"

He was not hungry, but he needed more time. The redcap
carried his bag to a corner of the station, where there was a
lunch counter. He gave the man a half-dollar and then sat
down on a stool. He watched the pretty waitress for a while;
he had forgotten how pretty American waitresses were. She
came over and smiled at him and he said, "A chocolate milk
shake, please."

He watched her as she scooped ice cream, pressed syrup
and milk into the mixer, set it to buzz on the machine. He
said, "That isn't powdered milk, is it?"

"Oh, no," the girl said. She seemed shocked. "We use only
real milk from a cow."

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EPILOGUE

She poured half the heavy mixture into a glass and set it
before him. "You think about those things a lot," he said.
He picked up the glass and drained it in one swallow. It slid
down the same way, but it didn't taste the same. He noticed
the girl watching him and said, "You get out of practice
with them."

He didn't drink the rest, but paid and left. A redcap hur-
ried for his bag; he shook the man of! and carried it himself.
There was a taxi waiting outside and he threw the bag in
and gave the driver his address. When he settled back he
noticed that he was trembling a little.

There was not much traffic this time of the morning and
the cab made good time. He sat quiet as long as he could,
then leaned forward and said to the driver, "The city looks
good, doesn't it?"

"You been away?" the driver asked.

"I just got back from overseas."

"I got a boy in Italy," the driver said. He was a thin, sour-
looking man, getting old. "We just got word he married one
of them Eyetalian girls."

"Some of them are pretty nice," he said.

"Not this one," the driver said. "He sent us a picture.
She's a real first-class bag. I'm going to beat the hell out of
him when he comes home."

He felt like saying: maybe your boy won't come home; a
lot of them don't. But he settled back and kept quiet until
the taxi pulled up before his address. It was a large apart-
ment house with a garden in the middle. He had never seen

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EPILOGUE

it before. His wife had moved there after the baby, while
he was still overseas.

He paid the driver, overtipping him, and then got out with
his bag. He stood for a minute in front of the house, afraid
again. Then he walked slowly through the garden and into
the lobby. He rang for the elevator, and wanted suddenly
to run away before it came, to escape from the responsibility
he heard clanking down the elevator shaft.

The elevator landed and a Negro porter opened the door.
He lugged in the bag and said, "Five, please." The porter
was old and took a long time getting the elevator started.
He got out at five; the hall was small and he found the
apartment without trouble. He stood in front of the door
for a minute, then rang the bell. The buzzer shrilled in the
distance. He waited in agony, feeling his insides tighten
the way they sometimes had at the front.

Then the door opened and his wife stood there, still in
pajamas. He tried to smile, but couldn't. He was really not
aware of anything, and then his wife said, her voice small
and far away, "Oh, I knew it was you." He stepped forward
and she said, muffled in his chest, "And I just got the couch
cover done. This very minute. I just got it done." He closed
the door with his foot and said, "Don't cry."

They were still in the hallway when there was a cry from
inside. "Oh, the baby!" his wife said. She took him by the
hand and led him through the living room into a bedroom.
It was yellow-bright and sunny; a crib stood in a corner, and
in the crib was the baby. The baby was smiling when they

212

EPILOGUE

came in, but stopped when she saw him. She backed into a
corner of the crib and his wife went over and took the baby's
hand and said, "That's Daddy."
"Da da," the baby said.

"Look, she said it," his wife said. "She knows you already."

"She's so big," he said. "I never expected her to be so big."

He started to sit down on a couch, but his wife said, "That's

the new cover. It's still full of pins." She pushed him gently

into the living room and sat him on the couch there. She sat

in a chair next to him. She said, "Are you hungry?" and

he said, "I had a milk shake at the station." She nodded and

he said, "It didn't taste the same."

They sat there, looking at each other. He could hear the
baby talking to herself in her crib. His wife came over and
sat beside him on the couch. He took her hand and she said,
over and over again, the wonder still in her voice, "You're
home. You're really home."

213

BOOK FIND CLUB

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THE PLOT AGAINST THE PEACE

Michael Sayers & Albert Kahn

REPORT FROM RED CHINA

Harrison Forman

FREEDOM ROAD .... Howard Fast
MY NATIVE LAND . Louis Adamic

These excellent books, all handsomely
bound, are still easily available to you at
the standard membership rate of $1.35
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KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN

Walter Bernstein

A young American soldier, blessed with the sure touch of the
"born" journalist and a deep personal understanding of what
it means to be an active participant in this war, tells here the
story of his three eventful years in camp and in combat.

Beginning at Fort Benning, Georgia, on a fine afternoon in
1941 with the war three thousand miles away, and ending in
Marshal Tito's headquarters in Yugoslavia in 1944, Sergeant
\ Bernstein's war adventures have taken him to many fronts in
many countries. While he was still in the United States he
served with the famous 8th Infantry of the 4th Infantry Divi-
sion, watched the paratroopers train, did publicity for This
Is the Army. Then came two months on a freighter as guest
of the U. S. Army. He was with a regimental intelligence de-
tachment in Italy, and did reconnaissance work in Sicily. Once
he was lost from his regiment and wandered about alone, seek-
ing his, outfit, through the terribly dangerous battle area.

He marched into Yugoslavia with fifty Partisans to Mar-
shal Tito's headquarters. They climbed tortuous mountain
trails and crossed through German-occupied territory for
seven days. Bernstein was the first correspondent to interview
Tito.

These experiences are exciting in themselves, and Bernstein
is a skilled and sensitive reporter who presents his story in an
enviably simple and graphic manner, without heroics or sen-
timentality. He is not just a correspondent writing about the
men who are fighting for us. He is himself one of them.

Most of the stories in Keep Your Head Down have appeared
in The New Yorker.

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